One-third of Americans say the COVID-19 pandemic is over

Americans are starting to feel the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and many have returned to pre-pandemic activities such as dining out, visiting friends and family in person, and shopping, despite increasing daily numbers in many parts of the country.

An Axios-Ipsos A poll released Wednesday revealed that 30% of Americans believe the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and nearly 60% of Republicans in particular consider the virus’s dominance of the world a relic of the past.

Many of those who thought the epidemic was continuing are still returning to normal life, and more than 60% of those surveyed claim to be returning to regular personal activities that were drastically interrupted when the virus broke out worldwide in early 2020.

After a steep drop from the Omicron variant’s peak in mid-January, data will be released when Covid cases start to rise again. Daily cases rose 20% last week to 95,719 per day, reaching the highest level since early February.

Despite the increase in cases, deaths have remained low, in part due to the high vaccination rates in the Americas and the milder nature of the Omicron variant compared to previous forms of the virus. There are an average of 340 deaths per day in the country, down 35% in the last seven days.

For the survey, which has been carried out regularly since March 2020, when the outbreak first emerged, researchers interviewed 982 participants from May 13 to May 16.

When asked if they thought the COVID-19 pandemic was over, ten percent of respondents said they “strongly agree” and 20 percent “somewhat agree”.

The majority of Americans still think the situation will continue, with 39% of respondents saying they “strongly disagree” with the claim that the pandemic is over, with most respondents.

However, the fact that 30% of Americans now think the situation is resolved represents a major shift in the dominance of the virus in many people’s lives, and some feel very comfortable the moment they think it’s all over.

Participants were also asked if they participated in any regular activities that may have been disrupted in the early stages of the virus. When asked if they ate out last week, 65% of Americans said they did.

About 70 percent of Americans said they also had a friend or family member who visited last week. Just over 60 percent said they had personally gone to a non-grocery store in the past seven days.

This suggests that many Americans who believe the pandemic is still active are even returning to fairly normal lives by engaging in activities deemed dangerous early in life with the virus.

More than one-fifth of those surveyed said they felt no risk of returning to what they thought was a normal life, while 41% said there was only a small risk.

Less than ten percent of Americans still believe there is a significant life-threatening risk, as was the case before the virus broke out two years ago.

Survey respondents also removed some of the pandemic-related guidelines they’ve addressed over the past two years, such as masking and staying one meter apart in public.

Less than 20% of respondents said they took both measures “always” in public last week. More than one-third of respondents said they had “never” worn a mask in the past seven days, and one-fifth of Americans never maintained a six-foot distance again, according to the study.

Americans’ greater comfort with the virus comes from teaching deaths. Deaths remained at one of their lowest levels in a month during the pandemic as the number of cases rose in the country.

But authorities are warning that other threats to the pandemic are emerging around the world, and it may be too soon to let our guard down.

The prevalence of the new strain of Covid BA 2.12.1, the most contagious version of the virus ranked by US health officials, continues to rise, officials said.

The strain, first discovered in New York last month, accounts for 48 percent of the listed Covid cases in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Tuesday. That’s an increase over the 43% of cases the tribe collected a week ago.

This new version of the detected virus is a sub-lineage of the “latent” BA.2 variant, which remains the dominant strain, accounting for 51% of cases. The new strain is believed to have a growth advantage of about 27% over the previous one and will likely become the dominant strain in the country by the end of the month.

Every single Covid case listed by the CDC falls under the umbrella of the Omicron variant, and the Delta variant has now been completely deleted from its successor.

The BA.1 strain of the virus, which caused a record number of worldwide epidemics during the winter months, now accounts for only 0.3% of cases in the United States, as the sub-variant has almost completely outgrown it.

Even the newest versions of Omicron may be making their way to America.

There are growing concerns about the BA.4 and BA.5 strains of the virus currently gaining ground in South Africa and triggering another wave in the country. The country also became the first to be affected by the original Omicron release in late November.

This week, both the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control recognized the dangers they pose to the world’s population, declaring them “species of concern.”

A previously published study from South Africa also found that the two variants may have the ability to evade immunity against the virus caused by a previous infection.

This could be of great concern to officials, as the massive spread of Omicron during the winter months – making most Americans immune to the virus – will no longer protect people in the future, opening the door to another new big wave.