Omicron has been on everyone’s minds over the holidays but one top foreign health official believes that the COVID variant may bring the entire pandemic to an end in the next two months.
Tyra Grove Krause, the chief epidemiologist at Denmark’s State Serum Institute, told Danish TV 2 (as per news.com.au) that a new study by State Serum has discovered that hospitalisations caused by Omicron are around half that caused by the Delta variant.
When pressed on how long COVID will continue to affect Denmark, she sounded very hopeful. “I think it will have that in the next two months, and then I hope the infection will start to subside and we get our normal lives back,” she said. “It will provide some massive spread of infection in the coming month. When it’s over, we’re in a better place than we were before.”
It’s a case of things getting worse before they get better. Dr Krause stated that due to more people becoming infected, the level of immunity in her country will grow enough to allow life to return to normality in the space of a few months.
She did warn that those next few months will be a time of real concern for the country’s healthcare system though. “Omicron will peak at the end of January, and in February we will see declining infection pressure and a decreasing pressure on the health care system,” she said. “But we have to make an effort in January, because it will be hard to get through.”
“In the long run, we are in a place where coronavirus is here, but where we have restrained it, and only the particularly vulnerable need to be vaccinated up to the next winter season,” she added.
The positivity isn’t just coming out of Denmark. Dr Krause’s comments echo that of the World Health Organisation, who made an equally positive statement a few days ago. “If we put an end to inequality, we will put an end to the pandemic and the global nightmare that we have all gone through,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated in a speech on New Year’s Eve.
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Check out a report on Omicron’s effect on worldwide travel:
