Basseterre: Health officials in St. Kitts and Nevis voiced optimism that the deadly COVID-19 virus’s impact will be greatly reduced later this year, as the virus transitioned from a pandemic to an endemic phase.
Dr Hazel Laws, Chief Medical Officer of the National Emergency Operations Centre’s COVID-19 briefing, expressed optimism that the COVID-19 pandemic’s emergency will be over in the following months.
“COVID-19 will not be forgotten any time soon. However, we are optimistic that the pandemic’s emergency phase will conclude this year, in 2022. In other words, COVID-19 will become an endemic illness, owing to the high level of protection derived from vaccination and spontaneous infection,” according to Dr Laws.
Increased awareness of the virus, which was initially discovered in late 2019, and strategies to protect oneself from catching it, as well as medicines to alleviate symptoms, are all adding to the endemic phase’s hastening.
COVID-19 has taken the lives of several people in the last two weeks, thus CMO Laws urgently advised people not to relax their guard.
“We’re definitely not out of the woods yet.” COVID continues to pose a major threat to the most vulnerable people. We’ve recently lost 11 of our older folks, so we’re not out of the woods yet, and the older adults among us are still vulnerable,” Dr. Laws noted.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is light at the end of the tunnel,” remarked the Chief Medical Officer, “and therefore there is hope that we can reach some sort of normalcy in 2022.”
People, especially those aged 12 to 17, were aggressively encouraged to get vaccinated, since the global scientific and health community agrees that vaccination is the most effective line of defence against the virus and the most expedient means to terminate the pandemic.
