Texas health experts believe the Covid-19 will remain forever and yearly vaccine will be required

Texas – It’s getting more obvious that Covid-19 will remain forever and regular vaccination will be required like we are used to with the seasonal flu.

The vaccines are working, lowering the chance of severe condition and death, but they are not 100% effective against contracting the virus.

Now the Texas state health officials and experts also claim that the virus will probably be here forever and regular, yearly vaccination will be required to keep things under control.

Aside from a possible surge this winter, the state’s top epidemiologist said COVID-19 could be a seasonal thing we have to deal with, like the flu.

In Tarrant County as well as in Texas in general, the number of cases and the positivity rate are decreasing for weeks now meaning that the we probably are getting closer to the end of the Delta variant, just like some other states like Arkansas that are seeing drastic drop in cases recently.

UT Southwestern researchers said COVID patients in Tarrant County hospitals have dropped nearly 40% in the last two weeks. In Dallas County, patient levels are down 30%.

The positive news about the Delta wave is coming from part of the country, but the number of health experts who believe that the virus will become endemic just like the seasonal flu is rising.

“COVID-19 is looking more like it might become just part of our circulating viruses and then become seasonal,” Shuford said. “But we still need to make sure that enough of our population is immune so that we don’t keep having these huge pandemic waves and we can get to a point where it just becomes part of our normal circulating respiratory viruses and not something that causes huge strains to our health care system every time it hits.”

Texas, just like many other states, allows concerts, football games with crowd, gatherings and fairs. Despite all of that, the numbers are falling and that’s mostly because of the decent vaccination rate the state has. According to the latest data, 63% of eligible Texans are vaccinated with at least one dose of the vaccines.

The natural immunity also takes part in the latest trend since those who contracted and recovered from the virus are also safe from getting developing serious condition and death.

But both the natural immunity and the vaccine immunity fade overtime and that makes it hard reaching herd immunity and getting rid of the virus forever.

“Part of the problem is that the goalposts keep moving. Every time we get a new variant, especially one that’s more transmissible, that changes our herd immunity threshold and so it keeps getting higher,” she explained.

Although no one can predict if or when another wave will hit the country, health experts urge everyone to be extra cautions in the upcoming period if we want to avoid the last year’s winter scenario. This warning comes since people will be spending more time indoors as temperatures drop making the potential spread of the virus easier.

texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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