Subscriber OnlyHealth

As Covid risk recedes, we will need to unwind built-up fear

The pandemic isn’t over yet, but Ireland’s Omicron wave has hit its peak

The Omicron variant has turned out to be milder than previous variants, and its high transmissibility means millions of infected people are boosting their immunity at little cost to their long-term health. Photograph: Getty ImagesPhotograph; Getty Images
The Omicron variant has turned out to be milder than previous variants, and its high transmissibility means millions of infected people are boosting their immunity at little cost to their long-term health. Photograph: Getty ImagesPhotograph; Getty Images
Paul Cullen's picture
Paul Cullen Health Editor
Wed Jan 19 2022 - 01:00

It’s over. Not Covid-19 or the pandemic, but certainly this phase of it is over. The virus isn’t going anywhere. It might even come back in some more dangerous form and plague us again. People will still fall ill from it and some will die. But on a population level, in its current form, in this country, it has run its race.

The threat is receding. With each passing day there will be less need for the superstructure we have created of surveillance, restrictions and testing.

Perspiration, attrition and some luck contributed to this outcome. Hard work produced effective vaccines in record time, and saw them administered to 95 per cent of the Irish population.

Hospital Report

The Omicron variant has turned out to be milder than previous variants, and its high transmissibility means millions of infected people are boosting their immunity at little cost to their long-term health.

READ MORE

Ireland’s Omicron wave has peaked. The number of Covid-19 patients in hospital is steady despite soaring cases numbers; 30 per cent of these are being treated for other conditions and many are not displaying any Covid-19 symptoms at all.

Frontline doctors report a step change in the patients they are seeing, who are generally less severely ill than in previous waves and are likely to be discharged more quickly.

The battle with Covid-19 has played out as a kind of score draw. The virus, while not extremely lethal, thrived on sneaky transmission, often via people showing no symptoms. It spread in the air as well as in droplets and devastated vulnerable populations.

The world fought back with lockdowns and other restrictions that were and still are highly divisive. Eventually we came up with vaccines, but the virus mutated into yet more dangerous forms. We countered with boosters and as more people gained vaccine – or infection-induced immunity – the virus was forced back into the Omicron corner.

Better outcomes

We have learned a lot about treating Covid-19 patients over the past year, resulting in better outcomes. Soon we will have access to new antiviral drugs that promise to greatly reduce the risk of serious illness.

Because Omicron is so transmissible there is less chance of stemming a wave of infections and less to be gained from trying to control it with restrictions. Most of us are going to get the variant at some point even if we were previously infected.

Throughout the two years of the pandemic we learned the lesson that governments had to move fast to forestall the worst potential impacts of the virus. Now their task will be to quickly unwind the measures they have introduced, and to restore some sort of normality to public life consistent with the safety of their citizens.

Some groups will need more protection than others – health workers and the immuno-compromised, for example.

If adults choose not to get vaccinated that is their choice – some might take antivirals if they fall ill.

While vaccines were developed in record time, their distribution is going more slowly. Half the world still has to be vaccinated, a state of affairs that makes the emergence of new variants more likely.

False dawns

There have been false dawns before. A vaccine-led policy has its limits as too many shots dulls the immune response.

Some experts believe Covid-19 will continue to become less harmful; others are less certain. The future will be messy, with sporadic or localised outbreaks, and next winter will be difficult. But there should be no more need for blanket restrictions against Omicron, and certainly not for the emergency measures that currently dominate our lives.

We need to plan for the worst by improving surveillance and genomic sequencing while effecting a long-term solution to the problem of hospital overcrowding every winter.

Many will chose to continue wearing masks, keeping their distance and limiting their social interactions, but the rationale for universal mask mandates will diminish. If rules need to be reimposed at some point so be it, but make this conditional on clearly-agreed criteria.

The world needs a new generation of vaccines targeted at particular variants, or all variants, as well as vaccines that prevent transmission.

Finally, we all will need to unwind the fear we have built up during the pandemic to match the reducing risk posed by Covid-19.