Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Spain, recently requested that the EU consider treating COVID-19 as an endemic illness, like the flu, rather than a pandemic, though the World Health Organization (WHO) has it is too soon to consider such a move, a recent report by CNBC states.

CatholicVote Political Director Josh Mercer underscored the calls by Sanchez and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has been saying since last year that British residents would need to “learn to live with the virus.”

“The CNBC report shows it happening in Europe, but we’re starting to see it everywhere, including the United States," Mercer told the American Catholic. "More and more officials are using the term ‘endemic’ to describe COVID-19. It’s the rational position – that COVID-19 is real, but that it’s something we have to live with.”

This comes as both France and Germany have joined countries around the world in experiencing high numbers of new coronavirus cases, though milder symptoms have been reported with the omicron variant.

“As experts increasingly admit this possibility, voters will definitely have a lot to say at the ballot box when it comes to the politicians who used COVID as an excuse to shut down our schools, destroy our economy, and fire millions of religious Americans rather than exempt them from vax mandates,” Mercer added.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist who serves as vice provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania as well as chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, recently said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he believes preparation for coronavirus will eventually become like influenza and other respiratory viruses. He noted that vaccines, new treatments and other measures will help manage the spread and severity of infections.

“We think that over the course of 2022, we will get to an endemic stage, and the plan is — or the proposal is — we need a strategic plan for that, that covers vaccines, getting more people vaccinated, and the only way to do that, as we’ve been very clear over time, is mandates,” Emanuel told NBC.

An August 2021 study published by the Nature journal estimates that by the end of 2020, 103 million Americans — almost a third of the population — had been infected with coronavirus.

The CDC defines an endemic disease as one that is usually present in a community, but at a manageable level. According to CDC data, almost three-quarters of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a vaccine. Current estimates state that 95 percent of new coronavirus cases are the omicron variant.

No major religion has denounced the COVID-19 vaccine, NPR reports.