MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s top medical officer says COVID-19 could become endemic this year. Department of Health Services Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ryan Westergaard still warned that case counts could periodically spike but the disease likely will reach a stage in 2022 where numbers remain fairly constant. The term endemic is used to describe a disease as a regular part of a population, such as the flu,. The seven-day average of cases stood at 4,679 as of Thursday, compared with 18,857 on Jan. 19. Some medical experts maintain that COVID-19 will never become endemic because the disease will be driven by new variants that can evade vaccinations and infect swaths of unvaccinated people.
