COVID-19 pandemic to end in next 6 months? Here's what the experts said

If you are hoping that COVID-19 pandemic would end in the next three to six months, then there is some bad news for you as experts are of the view that the coronavirus outbreak will remain for more than six months.

According to experts, almost everyone will be either infected or vaccinated before the end of coronavirus outbreak. There will be some people who will test COVID-19 positive more than once. 

"I see these continued surges occurring throughout the world," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and an adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden. "Then it will drop, potentially somewhat precipitously," he said. "And then I think we very easily could see another surge in the fall and winter" of this year, he added.

It is to be noted that there are billions of people who are yet to receive COVID jabs and it is nearly impossible to eliminate the virus, which means there is good chance of more outbreaks in schools, on public transport and in workplaces in the coming weeks. 

"We're going to see hills and valleys, at least for the next several years as we get more vaccine out. That's going to help. But the challenge is going to be: How big will the hills and valleys be, in terms of their distance?" Osterholm said. "We don't know. But I can just tell you, this is a coronavirus forest fire that will not stop until it finds all the human wood that it can burn."

"With the pandemic, we have this enormous force of infection," Kanta Subbarao, director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. "That has counterbalanced the ability of the virus to proof-read," he added.

Some researchers claim that SARS-CoV-2 would become resistant to the first generation of vaccines. A Japanese study suggests that potentially dangerous mutations in the delta variant of COVID-19 are being picked up in a global database used by researchers to monitor these developments. 

"This is a scenario we hope won't happen," Simonsen said. "My God, we would have to do it all again."