Study: COVID-19 May Evolve to Become Milder Over Time, Similar to Common Cold

The end of the COVID-19 pandemic is not for tomorrow. In the long run, the disease is likely to become as benign as a cold. But before reaching this stage, there will need to be strong group immunization. "The faster a majority of people have been infected or vaccinated, the sooner we will reach this endemic stage," explained Jennie Lavine, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University in Atlanta and lead author of a new study published in the journal Science.

According to the researchers who conducted a comparative study of SARS-CoV-2 with the six other coronaviruses affecting humans (the four common cold viruses, SARS and MERS), the infection, like the common cold in children aged 3 to 5 years old who are regularly reinfected, will only end up producing mild symptoms. In other words, the COVID-19 vaccine, failing to prevent virus transmission, helps reduce severe cases.

Many scientists share this view. For Romulus Breban, a researcher at the Emerging Diseases Epidemiology Unit at the Pasteur Institute, we will have to live with this virus whose "effects will be felt for decades to come..." "We are managing to contain the epidemics because we have implemented a vaccination strategy and there are international surveillance structures," the researcher specifies in the newspaper La Croix.