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By Hatty Willmoth
Food & Nutrition Reporter
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The COVID-19 pandemic was five years ago but the virus continues to circulate among global populations—could that change in 2025? The experts think not.
In fact, three experts told Newsweek that 2025 will look much the same as 2024 in terms of COVID-19 risk.
Molecular virologist Professor Jonathan Ball, Deputy Vice Chancellor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said: "I think next year will play out similar to last: outbreaks associated with the emergence of new variants and/or waning population immunity."
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Dr. Robert H. Hopkins Jr., medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said: "Improvement in vaccine uptake, vaccine access and availability., ongoing evolution of COVID-19 variants and the willingness of our society to learn—and adhere to—the lessons of the pandemic will all impact the trajectory of COVID-19 in 2025.
"Unless we see significant changes in behavior, I expect 2025 to look very much like 2024."
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And infectious disease epidemiologist Professor Christophe Fraser, at the Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford, echoed this sentiment, saying: "I think 2025 will look a lot like 2024.
"We should expect the virus to continue circulating at high levels, one or two new variants to appear, likely continuing to be descendants of Omicron and we expect vaccine and infection-derived immunity to be protecting most people from the worst effects of this virus."
That's not to say that something could not happen to change the threat level of COVID-19 to public health—but the experts said this is unlikely.
"The only thing that would make a major impact would be the emergence of a new variant so genetically different to previous variants that immunity through past infections or vaccinations will be massively undermined," said Ball. "But this is a big unknown."
He explained that, while the virus is able to circulate and infect people, there would be no selective pressure to force dramatic change, so the emergence of a very different variant was unlikely—although not impossible.
Hopkins said that prevention efforts against COVID-19 were being complicated by the "ongoing mistrust of vaccines and public health in general among segments of the population."
He said that the impact of future scientific advances—such as more effective vaccines against new variants—would be "modest" if public health experts could not regain public trust in 2025.
Fraser said: "The intersection of public health and politics has not been a success. We need to make sure people can make choices based on accurate information from health providers on the risks to them and their loved ones."
He added that the changing political environment meant that "international collaboration is becoming more difficult, intergovernmental institutions are struggling and matters of health are becoming increasingly polarized and misrepresented."
But all three experts emphasized the continuing importance of vaccines to control the damage done by COVID-19.
"Current COVID-19 vaccines help prevent severe disease and death, yet far too many people are not up to date on COVID-19 vaccination," said Hopkins.
"Vulnerable and older people should continue to get vaccinated, as lasting immunity is harder to maintain in those groups," said Fraser, adding that people with long COVID would continue to need help in 2025.
But it was not all doom and gloom; scientific and technological advancements could mean we get a better grip on COVID-19 in future.
"One area of particular interest is that we are doing a much better job of understanding and predicting virus and immune co-evolution, using sequencing, breakthroughs in AI and evolutionary modelling," said Fraser.
"This will allow us to identify and characterize new variants more quickly, giving more time to adapt, for example generating vaccines for the new variants.
"There is exciting research happening on intranasal vaccines that could provide broader protection against both disease and infection—no solid data yet, though."
Is there a health problem that's worrying you? Do you have a question about COVID-19? Let us know via health@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice and your story could be featured in Newsweek.
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