Danish epidemiologist expects to return to normal life by March – TVNOVINY.sk

The high infectivity of the less serious coronavirus variant omicron will allow a return to normal life by March, after the peak of infections at the end of January, the Danish epidemiologist Tyra Grove Krause said on Wednesday. She is the vice president of the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) and a key adviser to the government on the coronavirus crisis, according to The Brussels Times.

Denmark is experiencing a new wave of infections and recorded a record 23,228 confirmed cases in 24 hours, making it one of the countries with the highest number of daily infections relative to the total population (approximately 5.8 million inhabitants) in the world.

“All indications are that the omicron is milder than the delta and that the risk of ending up in the hospital is only half,” Krause told the Danish media, according to a study conducted by the SSI.

For her, the high infectivity of omicron is even good news in this regard, because “it will lead to a massive spread of infection in the following month, peaking at the end of January.”

“It will be another difficult month. But when it is over, we will be in a better position than before … I think the infection rate will start to fall within two months and we can return to normal life by March,” Krause said.

The Brussels Times further writes that Belgian virologist Steven Van Gucht also made a similar statement in an interview with De Standaard on Wednesday, predicting that January and February would be two “very unpleasant” months. “We will have to grit our teeth for a while. But I predict an improvement in March,” Van Gucht said. According to him, however, experts are still waiting for models from biostatistics by Niel Hens, so that they can say something with certain precision about the properties of omicron. “Estimates and broad parameters are shifting models in all directions. We have to wait until the data is more reliable,” he added.