We are seeing rising number of COVID-19 cases
in many parts of the world.
What does that mean?
How is the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolving and what does it mean
when we say that the world must now learn to live with COVID-19?
Hello and welcome to Science in 5.
I am Vismita Gupta-Smith.
We are talking to Dr Maria Van Kerkhove today.
Welcome, Maria.
Let's start with these rising numbers of COVID-19
that we are seeing in some countries.
Maria, talk to us about what does that mean?
Hi Vismita. Thanks for having me back again.
There are a number of reasons why we're seeing increasing
cases in a number of countries.
First is that the virus continues to evolve.
Since Omicron first emerged,
we've had more than 900 sub lineages of Omicron in circulation,
and we're tracking each and every one of those,
and we'll come to those in a moment.
The other reason is that we have a lifting of public health and social measures.
So people are living their lives and they're living their lives
as safely as possible because we have increasing
vaccination coverage around the world and we have increasing
level of immunity from vaccination and-or past infection.
But that immunity does wane over time,
which means people can be infected.
And the combination of variants that emerge that have increased transmissibility,
which means they can infect people more easily
because there are properties of immune escape,
means that people can be reinfected again.
So this is something we will have to deal with going forward.
Right now, we are seeing an increase in case reporting from
a number of countries around the world.
For example, one of these countries is India.
And one of the reasons why we are seeing an increase
in case detection is likely because of the sub lineage XBB.1.16.
XBB.1.16 does have increased transmissibility,
but we have not yet seen a change in severity.
Another reason why we're likely seeing an increase in case reporting
from India is because one of the last big waves of infection
that India experienced was the Delta wave.
And that was quite some time ago.
While we are seeing an increase in case reporting
in a number of countries around the world,
we are not really seeing an increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
It's not true in all countries.
We still see hospitalizations and at the present time we estimate that
hundreds of thousands of people are in hospital each week due to COVID-19.
But because we have access to diagnostics, early clinical care
and the use of antivirals and safe and effective vaccines,
people who are infected or reinfected with SARS-CoV-2
are not dying as frequently as they were in the beginning of this pandemic
when we didn't have treatments and we didn't have vaccines.
Maria talked to us about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus is evolving.
The more the SARS-CoV-2 virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to change.
This is what viruses do, and this virus continues to evolve
in the fourth year of this pandemic.
We've had Omicron variant of concern in circulation for more than a year now.
We have two variants of interest that we are tracking
in terms of tracking its transmissibility,
its severity and its impact on our interventions.
And we have risk assessments that are published online.
This is XBB.1.5 and XBB.1.16.
We also have a number of variants under monitoring that we are tracking.
Maria, like you said, this virus is here to stay
and we have to learn to live with SARS-CoV-2 circulating and COVID-19.
What does that mean for individuals as well as government?
We need governments to ensure access to rapid diagnostics
and making sure that people are tested very quickly so that
they get into the clinical care pathway,
that governments have access to these antivirals so that people can be treated very quickly
so that they don't develop severe disease.
We have to work on increasing primary vaccination coverage,
particularly in low and middle income countries.
And we have to ensure those who are most at risk for severe disease
receive the boosters according to need.
We also need governments to focus on surveillance
to ensure that we are tracking this virus.
As individuals, it's really important that you know what your risk is
and you take steps to lower your risk as you're living your lives.
First and foremost, get vaccinated and get boosted
if it is recommended for you.
It's not only important if you are vaccinated, but when your last booster was.
And take measures to keep you and your loved ones safe.
And remember, we're also concerned about post COVID-19 condition
and the potential effects of repeat infections.
There is a lot more that we know about this disease four years in,
but there are still quite some uncertainties.
Thank you, Maria.
That was Science in 5, today.
Until next time, then stay safe, stay healthy and stick with science.