Covid-19 become endemic in India

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – World Health Organization Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan has said Covid-19 may be entering a stage where it will become endemic.

Concept –

According to the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), endemic refers to the “constant presence and/or usual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area”.
According to an article published in the journal Science in 2020, when epidemics become endemic, they become “increasingly tolerated” and the responsibility of protecting against it shifts from the government to the individual.
An epidemic, on the other hand, refers to a scenario when the number of cases of the disease increases, often suddenly, which means the cases are more than the expected levels.
Notably, the number of cases of a disease that are considered “constant” would be different for different areas and would also depend on the particular geographical area’s population.
Out of the seven coronaviruses known to infect humans, the ones that have emerged since the last two decades including SARS (fatality rate of 10 per cent), MERS (fatality rate between 35-36 per cent) and now SARS-CoV-2 are the ones that are a cause for worry since they are capable of causing severe illnesses and even deaths.
Out of these three, while humans are still dealing with SARS-CoV-2 and are likely to continue doing so in the coming few years, SARS (emerged in China) and MERS (emerged in Saudi Arabia) were locally contained. The last case of SARS was detected in 2003, however, MERS is still circulating.