I am an epidemiologist and a consultant in the health service, and I am analyzing data on the impact of a new Covid variant that threatens to put huge pressure on our hospitals. I am back on the frontline in A&E helping my colleagues deal with the pressure.
There are good reasons to be confident that we will have a better year than 2021.
Tens of thousands of people were admitted to hospital and thousands of people died every week in January of last year.
If we catch Covid, we have a lower risk of ending up in the hospital because we are protected with highly effective vaccines. The hospitalisation and death rates for Covid have fallen due to the combination of vaccines and a better knowledge of how to treat the disease.
This year, our children are going back to school this week, and we are able to meet our friends and families, because retail and hotels are open.
Ensuring that existing vaccines are distributed equally across the globe is the immediate priority.
The early indications are that we are not going to see a repeat of last winter, when hospital admissions rose more slowly and deaths were not as high. The information from South Africa and the UK gives us hope that this wave will be over quicker than previous ones, and with less loss of life.
There are other reasons to be optimistic. The long-promised antiviral medicines have arrived. The Covid treatments have the potential to transform the situation as similar medicines have done with HIV and hepatitis C. Many others are currently undergoing clinical trials and should be available this year.
New vaccines will make it easier to manage the coronaviruses that will inevitably emerge over the coming year. Multivalent vaccines, which protect against infections from multiple strains, will probably become available later this year.
Other vaccines that target parts of the virus are also on the way. There are vaccines being tested that can be delivered with a variety of methods, which will make it easier to distribute and overcome needlephobia.
Ensuring that our existing and very effective vaccines are distributed more equally across the globe is the immediate priority. We have made huge progress, with 8.5 billion doses delivered to date, but far too many frontline healthcare workers in low-income countries have not received their first dose.
It's realistic to think that the world will be wiped out in 2022, but it will require an end to high-income countries and a temporary lifting of patents. We will not be able to prevent new variants completely, but we can reduce the risk by ensuring everyone is vaccine-free.
We can be optimistic that in the year 2022, Covid will be an endemic disease in most countries thanks to the high levels of population immunity we now have, but sadly it is not going away permanently. An annual booster jab is likely to be needed to deal with new flu strains and waning immunity, as there are still likely to be seasonal winter peaks.
I have lost friends and family. I have seen many patients suffer from Covid and the effects it has on our health services. The huge loss of life and pain should be over soon.
We need to continue following the public health guidance to protect the most vulnerable and reduce the pressure on the health service because Covid is still a serious threat to them.
We can begin to live with the virus without fear of Covid and lockdowns in the year 2022, which is a realistic possibility.
Dr Raghib Ali is a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge and is also a consultant in acute medicine at the Oxford University hospitals.
