As the Omicron variant gains momentum in Europe and the US, scientists are rewriting their expectations for the Covid-19 pandemic next year.

Just weeks ago, disease experts were predicting that countries would begin to emerge from the pandemic in 2022 after enduring a series of surges driven by the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. First among them would be populations with a significant amount of exposure to the coronavirus, through a combination of infections and vaccination.

In those places, Covid-19 was expected to ease into an endemic disease, hopefully with less-severe periodic or seasonal outbreaks. Vaccines, available for much of 2021 only in wealthy nations, could reach the majority of the global population by the end of the year ahead.

But the rapid spread of the highly-mutated Omicron variant is undermining that hope.

Read the full Reuters story here.