This looks like the last gasp of the pandemic

Unless we are in for a nasty surprise, India may currently be watching the 'end of covid' as forecast. We have had a harsh run. Let's keep watch and see it through till it goes endemic

Pandemics have no expiry date. Covid has taken over 6.8 million lives globally since its outbreak and is still around three years after it brought the world to a halt. But they do exhaust their menace, eventually, if the bug that's sickening people evolves in line with theory to get both catchier and milder for better odds of its own survival. Genes get far by getting around fast, after all, not by killing those who enable their spread. Barring the Delta shock of 2021, the covid virus has by and large stuck to that script with its genetic variants. India's Delta wave of infections was followed by a far less grim Omicron surge, and by the time last summer's swell began to ebb, it was clear that covid was set to finally go endemic: settle down, that is, at a benign rate that's low and stable. What we have struggled to do with inflation, nature has been doing to covid, by and by, helped along by mass vaccination and acquired immunity. A recent upturn in cases, however, suggests it could be a longer haul than we'd expected.