Just weeks ago, the US was on track to end the pandemic in 2022. Then it hit the Omicron variant - disrupting scientists' predictions.

The new variant of the rapidly spreading coronavirus is now responsible for 73 percent of cases in the United States, a rate that doctor Anthony Fauci called "unprecedented."

Now, some US researchers say Omicroni may actually accelerate the virus's transition from pandemic to endemic.

"As all public health people have said, it will immediately overwhelm the population," says Dr.

David Ho, a world-renowned virologist and professor at Columbia University "Sometimes a fire can spread very quickly, but then it goes out at the same rate," the Telegraph reports.

In particular, natural immunity is not as reliable as vaccine-enabled immunity.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 62 percent of the American population is fully vaccinated.

Only 30 percent of those people received a booster dose, crucial to strengthening their defense against Omicron.

Omicron is highly contagious, but the impact on hospitalizations and deaths is still unconfirmed by researchers, reports

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Dr.

Timothy Brewer, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is one of those experts who thinks "COVID-19 will never disappear completely."

Rather, people will have to learn to live with it.

Regular vaccinations and treatments with antiviral pills can be combined with infection-induced immunity to make visible outbreaks less severe in the coming years - not unlike the way doctors manage the flu, a seasonal endemic disease that has caused numerous pandemics over the last century.

/ Telegraphy /