“I think we’ve done a huge disservice using the word ‘endemic,’ frankly,” Michael Fraser, executive director of the US Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told an audience of mostly public health officers during a panel discussion at the 2022 Preparedness Summit in Atlanta on Thursday…

Endemic refers to the constant presence or “usual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent” among a population within a geographic area, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But it might be too simplistic a term to apply to Covid right now.

“It doesn’t seem to fit,” Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told CNN at the event. “No term really can just be plugged and played.”