By Noralyn O. Dudt THE OMICRON, we would like to think with a modicum of hope, is the pandemic's last act . As Omicron has behaved so brazenly chasing as many victims as it could, but not as potent as the Delta had been, the pandemic ending is no longer a question of how but when. So many cases of infections—serious and not too serious—have brought people to the hospitals that the light we thought we saw at the end of the tunnel suddenly looked dimmer. However, these large numbers of infections had provided a "layer of immunity" to huge swathes of the world and may be moving us closer to an endemic stage as the virus is maxing out in its ability to make such big evolutionary jumps. For the first time since the spread of COVID-19 stunned the world in early 2020, many epidemiologists are now willing to entertain the prospect that the virus might be making steps toward endemic status—the stage when COVID-19 is comparable to seasonal illnesses like the c
Online edition of The Ilocos Times, a community newspaper based in Laoag City, Ilocos Norte.