Edited excerpts: Do you think covid-19 pandemic has come to endemicity, in India and the world? From CDC’s perspective and the US administration side of things, we are ready to shift our response in the US, and we feel that we are approaching the time when we can manage covid-19 without using lockdowns etc.
SARS-CoV-2 remains a public health priority for us, but we are in a better position to respond. We can definitely say that we are at a point where covid-19 doesn’t have to disrupt our lives which is what really most endemic diseases are.
We have to make sure that we have to stay up to date with our testing, vaccines, boosters etc. However, we no longer consider covid-19 a severe threat to people’s health.
Covid-19 is yet just another disease. Do you think that SARS-CoV-2 is a lab-made virus which first originated in China? The jury is still out on that.