Will the WHO declare the end of the pandemic?

The new year that has just begun will be one of resilience for individuals, families and companies forced to readapt and reinvent themselves due to the lethargy of a health emergency that continues to condition the world's economic clock. 

Since last October, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been speculating about declaring the end of the pandemic sometime in 2022. Its head, Tedros Adhanom, is hesitant, but at other times seems very determined, as does part of his team.

What does this declaration depend on? On the pathogen becoming less effective and less lethal and ending up as a seasonal virus, and on the emergence of better placebos, serums and medicines for everyone.

The hope is that the new vaccines will have a greater immunogenic capacity in the face of the speed of variants of the virus, and the Spanish company Hipra is preparing its own vaccine based on recombinant proteins with the aim of protecting against the new strains. Tests have shown it to be highly efficient and effective against Omicron; the health authorities intend to have it ready by the summer. 

But there are also other vaccines whose task is also to sterilise people against the virus, to prevent them from spreading it, and nasal vaccines are being developed for this purpose: Russia announced its nasal version of Sputnik V, which will protect against Omicron, for the first quarter of the year.

Both preventing infection and cutting off transmission is the goal of the other Spanish nasal vaccine led by virologist Luis Enjuanes, director of the Spanish Coronavirus Laboratory, which is still in the experimental phase. 

Before the end of 2021, Adhanom affirmed that "the world has the tools to put an end to this calamity" and admitted that the strongest phase of the pandemic "is behind us and we just have to wait for it to subside", which could well be in 2022. 

In any case, in the WHO's opinion, lifting the pandemic declaration does not mean that the virus has been extinguished, it will continue to cause outbreaks and deaths (with a higher incidence in the unvaccinated) and there will be re-infections; it will continue to be useful to use masks and take precautions, especially indoors. 

Mike Ryan recently tweeted in December that the acute phase of the pandemic as we know it now, with hospitalisations and deaths, may end next year, although the virus will remain with us.

The WHO's director of Emergencies asks not to claim victory in advance because "there is still a bumpy road ahead", there is a delay in vaccination in several countries on different continents and while some are putting in the first doses, others are on the fourth booster dose, as is the case with Israel. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Undoubtedly, economic recovery will prevail tied to the evolution of the virus, which adds an enormous dose of uncertainty to the immediate future, with new variants of concern detected as has happened with Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and recently with Omicron; in the first days of the year, France warned that it had identified another variant derived from the Republic of Congo, which the University Hospital Institute of Marseille, named as IHU and B.1.640.2 of which little information is available so far. 

There are other circumstances with cases of Flurona, an infection caused in a person when they have both influenza virus and coronavirus. Israel has reported some cases, as has Catalonia, but so far epidemiologists have not found the recombination to be more serious. 

Juan Jesús Gestal Otero, a public health expert in Spain, told TVE that this recombination indicates "that the COVID is weakening, which could mean the beginning of the end of the pandemic". 

While only hypotheses are being worked on, there are some sectors that remain more vulnerable than others, especially those related to tourism, travel, hotels and leisure. The year has just begun and infections are the order of the day.