Too soon to treat COVID-19 like flu, say experts
As cases of the Omicron variant spiral, some world leaders are calling for it to be treated like an endemic disease, but WHO doctors disagree
The Omicron coronavirus variant should not yet be seen as a flu-like endemic illness, the WHO has said in response to calls for such a move.
On Monday Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez mooted that it may be time to change how it tracks COVID-19’s evolution to instead use a method similar to flu, because its lethality had fallen.
That would imply treating the virus as an endemic illness, rather than a pandemic, without recording every case and without testing all people presenting symptoms.
The debate comes in the wake of new data from the University of Washington in the US that predicts more than half of Europe’s population will be infected with the variant in the next two months.
