Singapore — In an interview with CNBC on Monday (June 21), infectious disease specialist Dr Paul Tambyah said that it would be a “matter of time” before global health authorities declare the pandemic to be endemic.
A pandemic is declared by the WHO when the increase of infection is exponential and covers a wide area, spanning numerous countries and populations.
An outbreak of disease is considered endemic when it is consistently present but is limited to a certain region, making the spread and rates of the disease easy to predict.
When asked by the host to hazard a guess as to when the World Health Organization (WHO) would declare the situation as endemic, Dr Tambyah, who is also chairman of the Singapore Democratic Party, said that this could be “somewhere around the Tokyo Olympics,” scheduled to begin next month (Jul 23 to Aug 8), but added that his opinion is not “scientific” but based on looking at the public health, as well as the global situation.
In an excerpt of the interview that Dr Tambyah shared on his Facebook page on Monday night, he also talked about travel restrictions.
He said that while there hasn’t been published data on how efficacious the vaccines are, and that the figures for Singapore quoted by the Minister for Health have not been subjected to peer review, he believes that “once the published data are available it’s going to be really hard to justify further restrictions on individuals who have been double vaccinated.”
He added that there is a precedent for this: yellow fever vaccination requirements for people traveling to parts of South America and Africa, which have “worked really well” over the years using the international health regulations of the WHO.
Dr Tambyah said he does not see any reason why full vaccinations cannot be accepted as criteria for travel, based on “good solid scientific data.”
The host asked him what his “best medical guess” is as to when the WHO would declare that the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 is endemic in communities as opposed to a pandemic, which will lead to the lifting of travel restrictions.
Dr Tambyah answered that all pandemics have turned into an endemic virus, with the H1N1 virus in 2009 being the most recent.
“It took about a year and a half before the pandemic was eventually declared over and it was accepted that it was endemic,” he added.
As for the Spanish flu from 1918 to 1919, he admitted that it “took a while” as this was “complicated” by World War I.
“But you know eventually even that deadly virus became the dominant circulating influenza virus all the way from 1919 to 1957 so I guess it’s a matter of time.”
He also said that if he “had to guess, I would say it’s going to be somewhere around the Tokyo Olympics.”
The SDP chair captioned his Facebook post by writing, “We will have to live with this virus, protect the vulnerable and prepare for the next threat.”
/TISG
Read related: Paul Tambyah: Cleaner infected at SHN facility likely to have got Covid through a contaminated surface
Singapore will roll out Covid-detecting breath test developed by NUS grads