LONDON — There are growing calls in Europe for Covid-19 to be treated as an endemic illness like the flu despite strong warnings from global health officials that the pandemic is far from over.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is the latest European leader to stick his head above the parapet by suggesting that it’s time to re-evaluate Covid. He called on the EU to debate the possibility of treating the virus as an endemic illness.

“The situation is not what we faced a year ago,” Sánchez said in a radio interview with Spain’s Cadena SER on Monday as Spanish school children returned to their classrooms after the holidays.

He said, “I believe we must evaluate the evolution in Covid to an epidemic illness from the pandemics we’ve faced so far.” Sanchez stated that it was now time for a discussion about a gradual reassessment of the pandemic at both the technical and the health professional levels, as well at the European.

Sanchez’s remarks are a significant departure for other leaders of the continent. However, most were focused on the immediate challenge to address the alarming number of Covid cases due to the omicron variant. which is highly infectious but widely appearing to cause less severe illness more akin to a cold than the flu symptoms seen with earlier variants.

France reports over 300,000 daily new cases, while Germany records 80,430 infections, which is the highest number of new infections in a single day, since the outbreak began.

Sanchez’s comments are similar to those made last year in U.K. with Prime Minister Boris Johnson telling the British public that they would have to “learn to live with the virus.”

So, the British government had to keep its cool in recent weeks, not adding new restrictions for the public despite Johnson’s description of a “tidal waves” of cases triggered by omicron.

Nadhim Zhawi, U.K. Education Secretary, said Sunday to BBC that the country is on the “path from pandemics to endemics” after the government suggested it might reduce the time of isolation for those who are vaccinated for Covid. It stated that this could be reduced to just seven days for positive Covid tests.as with the latest guidance in the U.S.) be able to reduce absences from the workplace as well as the severe economic disruption caused Covid.

Many epidemiologists and virologists have stated that Covid — which first emerged in China in late 2019 before spreading around the world, causing over 313 million cases to date, and over 5 million deaths — is here to stay and will become an endemic disease eventually.

It means that Covid will remain in a population for foreseeable future. However, the virus shouldn’t be spreading to other countries or causing an outbreak (which could make it a pandemic).

But, the World Health Organization has warned that Covid may not be considered an endemic illness. The World Health Organization warned Tuesday that Covid is not yet at an endemic level as they estimated. more than half of the people in Europe and Central Asia could be infected with Covid in the next six to eight weeks as omicron spreads.

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Catherine Smallwood, a senior emergency officer at WHO Europe, said it’s too soon to suggest the world is moving into an endemic phase of Covid.

Smallwood explained that in terms of endemicity we are still some way away and that there is a lot to be discussed about it right now.

She stated that “endemicity presumes there’s stable circulation of the virus at predetermined levels, and possibly known waves of epidemic transmission.”

But what we are seeing now is not the same as 2022. We still have lots of uncertainties, we have a virus evolving quickly, posing new challenges, so it’s unlikely that we will ever be able to declare the virus endemic. Although it might eventually become an endemic, it is difficult to pin that date down to 2022 at the moment.

Smallwood stated that widespread vaccination coverage is key to this scenario, however, at the moment there were no conditions for endemicity.

Marco Cavaleri is the head of biologic health threats strategy and vaccines strategy for the European Medicines Agency. He said that while no one knows the exact time that the pandemic will become endemic, he added that there are still some steps to be taken.

“What’s important is that the virus will become more endemic, but we can’t say we have already achieved that status. So the virus continues to behave as a panademic,” he stated at a press conference.

“We will move quickly to an endemic scenario, despite the fact that there is increasing immunity and omicron will help with this.

According to Our World in Data, 59.2% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine but only 8.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.

However, booster shots can be problematic. Scientists at the WHO and other organizations warn that constant boosters may not work.

Cavaleri of the EMA stated Tuesday that repeating vaccinations at short intervals would not make for a sustainable, long-term strategy.

He stated, “If you have a strategy that gives boosters every 4 months, then we may end up having issues with the immune response… so it is important to not overload your immune system by repeated immunizations.”

“And, secondly, there’s the possibility of fatigue among the population if boosters are continued to be administered.” Cavaleri stated that if one wants to avoid endemicity then boosters must be administered in time with cold season.

He noted that “We’ll have to consider how to transition from the pandemic situation to one more endemic.”