The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) spokesperson Taweesilp Visanuyothin said last week that the government will declare Covid-19 as endemic in October. The decision to label the infectious disease as endemic was based on the relatively limited number of severe cases and fatalities.
Under the endemic status, the prevalence of Covid-19 will be similar to influenza, and there will be new cases all year long.
Citing that Covid-19 has also toned itself down, Dr Taweesilp also said last week the present Covid-19 situation is at the green level, with 2,000 to 3,999 inpatients and 11 to 39 deaths a day and 201 to 399 inpatients dependent on ventilators, while clusters of infections are limited.
With attempts to pull the country from an economic slump and to boost tourism, coupled with other factors including Thailand hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) in November, it is without a doubt that the government would rush through the endemic stage.
Is Thailand ready to live with the virus? And what does "ready" mean?
Earlier this year, Prof Teo Yik Ying of the National University of Singapore's Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, pointed out clearly that the world was not ready to live with the virus. On the other hand, only a small number of developed countries were capable of protecting their population against Covid-19 with sufficient medical facilities and so forth.
With that said, the World Health Organisation (WHO) feared that other countries would decide to lift most of the social and community measures before a vaccination uptake and hospital resources were ready, which could have led to many more infections and deaths.
Then, months later the WHO again stressed that Covid-19 was far from becoming an endemic disease and could still trigger large global outbreaks. Michael Ryan, WHO health emergencies programme director, said it was wrong to think that Covid-19 had settled down into a seasonal transmission pattern. Still, he said, it remained capable of causing huge epidemics.
Meanwhile, a study published by Yale in the scientific journal PNAS Nexus last month revealed that although there is a likelihood that the novel coronavirus could become endemic, that might not happen before 2024.
As the Yale team predicted, an estimate of 15% of the population could be infected at any given time in 2024. In the meantime the virus will constantly circulate, and certain populations will remain more vulnerable. "We can't assume once we reach the endemic state that everybody is safe," said the author of the new study.
Whether or not a country is ready to live with the virus doesn't depend on the virus because, as with all microorganisms, it will continue to evolve. Instead, it largely depends on a country's preparation of public health facilities including vaccination, medication, hospital beds or even personal hygiene measures and people's attitudes.
As of Aug 15, more than 5.33 billion people worldwide have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, an equivalent to almost 70% of the world population, as reported by The New York Times. In Thailand, as of now, a total of 142 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered, according to data from the CCSA. Of this number, around 56.9 million people -- an equivalent to 81% of the entire population -- have received at least one dose while around 53 million people or 76% of the country are fully vaccinated.
Although the number of fully vaccinated Thais sounds like a larger piece of the pie, a huge number of people still got infected and go unreported. Apparently, Covid-19 shots do not stop the virus from spreading. They only make symptoms less severe in many cases.
Therefore, pandemic or endemic, it all depends on the attitudes. If countries and their population are well prepared and strictly follow preventive measures, the disease is endemic in their perspectives simply because it means people are ready to handle whatever lies ahead.
Earlier this year, the US health officials admitted that the majority of Americans have been infected with Covid-19 at least once, but they caution people not to presume they have protection for the future. "What we want to make sure is that we're prepared for what might come next," said Xavier Becerra, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Thailand should do likewise. Instead of rushing through the endemic stage of the public health crisis that took the lives of more than 32,000 Thais since the beginning of the spread, let's first be prepared.
Arusa Pisuthipan is the editor of the Life section of the Bangkok Post.
