Bosses at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Monday from now on Americans will have to embrace COVID-19 as an endemic respiratory virus just like any seasonal flu..FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock and the FDA’s Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Dr. Peter Marks, wrote that COVID-19 will be endemic in the population for the foreseeable future..The FDA stated the country is emerging from the pandemic..“As the US emerges from the recent Omicron surge of the COVID-19 pandemic following close to a million deaths in the country attributable to COVID-19, many people are hoping that the worst is over,” the FDA said..The team counselled that the coronavirus must now be accepted as another common flu virus in the Journal of the American Medical Association..“Widespread vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, combined with the availability of effective therapeutics, could blunt the effects of future outbreaks. Nonetheless, it is time to accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal,” the FDA officials wrote..“It will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza. And it likely will require similar annual consideration for vaccine composition updates in consultation with the [FDA].”.The officials said, like the seasonal flu, it will mean the COVID-19 shots will need to be developed each year to meet the challenges of those more dangerous strains of the virus, as the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates..In late March, the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said most Americans have acquired a level of immunity against COVID. An estimated 95% of the US population ages 16 and older had developed antibodies against the virus either through vaccination or infection as of December, according to a CDC survey of blood donor samples.. "The high level of immunity in the population from vaccines, boosters, and previous infection will provide some level of protection against BA.2," Walensky said during a White House COVID briefing in March..The number of people hospitalized with COVID in the US has fallen to its lowest since 2020. More than 10,700 patients ended up in hospital with the virus on Tuesday as a seven-day average, a 92% drop from the peak of the omicron wave in January, according to data from the US Health and Human Services Department..The CDC has modified its COVID guidance to focus more on hospitalizations as a measure of how severely the virus is affecting the US..More than 97% of the US population lives with low-to-moderate Covid levels. This means people there do not need to wear masks under the CDC's guidance.
