“Is this ever going to end?” That’s the question many people have been wondering when it comes to the coronavirus. 

As a society, we have become familiar with the word "pandemic," but now we’re hearing the word "endemic."

As of early April, according to Becker’s Hospital Review, five states: California, Utah, Missouri, New Jersey and Arizona have shifted to treating COVID as an "endemic."

“[An endemic] basically is an amount of disease in a population in time and space that is expected,” explained Dr. Stephen Thomas, director of the Global Health Institute at SUNY Upstate Medical.

“We expect a level of influenza every year, we expect a certain level of RSV every year,” Thomas said.

Thomas notes, to get to where we’d stop calling COVID-19 a pandemic, would be a call made by the World Health Organization.

“They’re gonna put some kind of number on that and then they’ll label it endemic, and that’ll be the baseline that we use going forward,” Thomas explained.

According to the New York State Department of Health’s website, April 5, 2022 had a COVID-19 positivity rate of 3.6%, which is much lower from January 7’s 21.2%. That’s when cases spiked from the omicron variant.

“The virus has plenty of opportunities to mutate,” Thomas noted.

With the CDC identifying the new omicron sub-variant, B.A.2, health experts say we aren’t in the clear, even though winter is over and it’s warming up outside.

“There are still plenty of people who are not immune, people who may have been immune either through natural infection or vaccination, and that immunity has waned,” Thomas said. “So, now the shields are down and they can get infected again.”

Thomas reminds us it’s also important to know that the label "endemic" does not mean "harmless." For example, malaria is considered an “endemic” in several countries. 

And, New York State has not switched its view on the COVID-19 pandemic, so we will have to wait and see.