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Impossible to predict when COVID-19 will become seasonal disease — expert

Alexander Gorelov also noted that there was no antiviral treatment in the world that could regulate the infection process

MOSCOW, October 29. /TASS/. The time frames surrounding coronavirus becoming a seasonal disease are impossible to predict, Deputy Director of the Russian Central Research Institute of Epidemiology Alexander Gorelov said on Friday.

"It is impossible to set any clear <...> deadlines that we can fight this infection by this date and it becomes seasonal. The process is multifactorial. <…> From my point of view, it is impossible to say in a specific time frame that tomorrow or a day after tomorrow, or in the foreseeable future the infection will be seasonal," he said at the Eurasian Economic Forum.

Gorelov added that there is no antiviral treatment in the world that can regulate the infection process. "On the other hand, if there is a vaccine, only 10% of the population has been vaccinated against the coronavirus infection. Do not forget about the phenomenon of the virus transmission to a nonimmune organism. The changes most often occur in the non-immune organism, as well as all its mutations that humanity faces over and over again," he said.

Earlier, chief of Russia’s sanitary watchdog, Anna Popova, said that the coronavirus would become a seasonal infection, like the flu.