A British doctor has forecast COVID-19 evolving to become less severe and endemic, and said the highly-transmissible but milder Omicron variant is the beginning of the process. “The thing that might happen in the future is you may see the emergence of a new variant that is less severe, and ultimately, in the long-term, what happens is COVID becomes endemic and you have a less severe version. It’s very similar to the common cold that we’ve lived with for many years,” Dr. Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) and a University of Warwick professor, told Times Radio on Saturday. Tildesley said that the latest variant is different from the previous Delta strain, but that the time for normalcy has not been reached. “We’re not quite there yet, but possibly Omicron is the first ray of light there that suggests that may happen in …