02/04/2022
Living with the virus
More governments across the world are saying they’re ready to “live with the virus.”
Australia, a nation that once imposed lockdowns in response to handfuls of cases, now says that it’s done with all that — even as cases soar. New Zealand plans to reopen to travelers, if gradually. Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway and other European countries are also beginning to treat Covid more like the flu.
On Tuesday, Denmark essentially declared an end to the pandemic in the country, lifting most of its remaining Covid restrictions and making it among the first E.U. members to abandon rules in favor of treating the virus as endemic.
For a look at the new approach, I spoke to Camilla Holten Moller, the head of the expert group for mathematical modeling at the Statens Serum Institute, the public health agency in Denmark that tracks the virus and advises the government on how to approach Covid.
Your institute recommended that the government remove virus restrictions. Why did you do that, given that cases in Denmark are rising?
We based it upon a really precise picture of the development of the epidemic, and what we saw with the Omicron variant taking over in the country.
Overall, the Omicron variant is less severe. So even though we see really high case counts, we don’t need to flatten the curve like we used to, simply because we don’t see as severe a picture as we used to — with Delta for instance.
When we look deeper into the numbers of hospitalizations, what we see is that we have a low and stable number of admissions to intensive care units. Yesterday I think we had 26 admissions to I.C.U.s, which is really low given that we also had 55,000 new cases.
So for us, here in Denmark, it is extremely important that we can accept to not flatten the curve, to let loose the epidemic, to accept that it can grow, as long as it doesn’t cause severe illness.
How are people in Denmark feeling about the lifting of restrictions?
I think overall the majority are simply happy that the restrictions are lifted and that we can start to get back to normal. The main task now is to protect those who are still at risk, like the elderly population or the immunocompromised. And there are still some measures in place that protect those who are at risk. We still recommend mask-wearing and taking a test before visiting hospitals and nursing homes.
In general, people are still wearing masks in some places — in the supermarkets or in the metro — but I think overall people may accept that it’s their responsibility to take care of those who need to be protected. But it’s more up to you to do that sort of risk assessment of your own.
What does your modeling say about the country’s future?
We released the latest modeling results just before Christmas, and we projected that we would see the peak of the epidemic here in late January, with hospitalizations peaking a little bit later, in mid-February. But what we’ve seen is that BA.2 [the Omicron subvariant] is more transmissible, there’s no doubt about it. And that means that we would expect the peak be to be a little bit higher and maybe extend a little bit into February.
But so many people have had an infection or have been vaccinated in certain geographical areas and in certain age groups that it simply slows down the growth of the epidemic. Of course, opening up and lifting all restrictions could lead to additional growth, especially when you open the nightlife. But we still see that the population immunity is so high that we still expect the peak to come within the coming weeks.
So is this the end in Denmark?
No. We are quite alert that something new could happen. And both the Epidemic Commission and the government have clearly stated that they are ready to act accordingly.
What we know is that immunity from SARS-CoV-2 isn’t lifelong immunity, like the immunity from measles, for instance. That means we will have waning immunity. We know what waning immunity looks like from the seasonal flu. Each winter people get back together inside, immunity starts to wane, you have new strains, and you start to see a rise in the flu and a small epidemic occur.
It’s also possible that we still have Omicron in the fall, and we see another peak then, simply because immunity will start to wane in the population. And that would probably mean we would do something, maybe start vaccinating again, or testing to a higher degree, or whatever other tools we have to contain that wave.
