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A new study predicts that SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — could eventually become no more infectious than the common cold, seasonally reappearing each year alongside other pathogens in the coronavirus family that bring about mild sniffles.
But that will happen only when the coronavirus becomes endemic, the point at which spread among human communities in a way that doesn’t cause massive outbreaks or serious illness is the norm, according to the researchers from Emory University in Georgia and Penn State University. Their study was published Tuesday in the journal Science.
“The timing of how long it takes to get to this sort of endemic state depends on how quickly the disease is spreading, and how quickly vaccination is rolled out,” study lead author Jennie Lavine, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University, told the New York Times. “So really, the name of the game is getting everyone exposed for the first time to the vaccine as quickly as possible.”
The team’s model was based on studies on six human coronaviruses, four of which regularly spread among people and cause only mild symptoms. The other two - severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) - emerged more recently and have higher fatality and infection rates, but share similar genetics with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
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15/01/2021
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