Expert notes entry to Covid ‘symbiosis’ era
While Covid-19 continues to concern health scientists, the growing consensus among experts is that it is something the world has to adapt to living with.
“All indications are that we have already passed into the stage of living with the virus rather than isolation. It has become perfectly clear that life cannot continue with constant restrictions. The psychological, socio-economic and health impacts are particularly painful and terribly unpredictable,” said Dr Stamatoula Tsikrika, a pulmonologist at the capital’s Sotiria Hospital and president of the Union of Pulmonologists of Greece, in comments to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA).
She noted that after two-and-a-half years of the pandemic, “we are by no means at the same level of knowledge and therapeutic management as we were when the virus first appeared.”
Tsikrika noted that the transnational exchange of best practices, new medical technology tools, valuable clinical experience, the hybrid immunity of the population through vaccination and infection, and antiviral drugs have been the most important factors in halting an RNA virus that has overturned normality across the globe. She also warned, however, against complacency.
“There should be no lessening of concern about the loss of human lives, the rate of re-infections, the definition of long or post-Covid syndrome, the pressure on the health system, and the spread of misinformation,” Tsikrika said.
“We now know that the virus has its own dynamic evolutionary survival path, expressed through sub-variations capable of evading prior immunity,” she added.
