Is the COVID pandemic over? Here’s what you need to know

DAYTON — Many of us are ready to hear it, the pandemic is over. On Wednesday, the country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, seemed to say the COVID pandemic is over, but this morning quickly retracted that statement.

“Right now, how pandemic is defined is not really something that we’re focused on here at Public Health,” said Public Information Officer Dan Suffoletto. “It really does not matter in terms of the way people need to protect themselves. What they need to do in terms of getting vaccinated – staying home when they’re sick.”

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Suffoletto calls the discussion over whether nor not we’re in a pandemic, more or less academic.

“There’s not really a world-wide agreement on the specific definition of a pandemic. There’s not a case count,” he said. “Right now, it’s kind of being used politically in terms of discussion about what’s happening nationally.”

According to Suffoletto, it’s not impacting local.

What distinguishes a pandemic from an endemic? Suffoletto said predictability.

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“Right now, we’re not really seeing a great deal predictability in a number of cases,” Suffoletto said. “Yes, the cases are going down and that’s a great thing, but we’ve seen this before and the number of cases has gone up.”

He continues, “You still could have a very high number of cases, but something could be endemic just because of the way the cases roll out and predictability of it.”

He said it’s like the flu.

“There’s a seasonality of the flu. There’s a predictability. It’s manageable, all of those things make the flu endemic,” Suffoletto said.

Suffoletto said, in his opinion, the pandemic will move into an endemic phase once we see some consistency and are able to predict what happens next.

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