2023-09-13 03:40:38
With the arrival of autumn, COVID-19 infections are once once more on the rise in the northern hemisphere, and new variants have emerged. An update on what you need to know for the months to come.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had terrible consequences, with the deaths of almost 7 million people worldwide.
But thanks to vaccines, immunity acquired following contamination, and better treatments, the virus is now much more under control.
“If you ask me to choose between the flu and COVID, I would choose COVID, because each individual case of the flu is riskier,” Ashish Jha, a doctor and former White House adviser, told AFP. But if COVID is now more rarely fatal, “it also seems to have a higher rate of complications in the long term”.
COVID-19 is also more contagious. Less seasonal than the flu, it has however reached a peak between December and January over the last three winters in the United States – slightly before the flu.
COVID remains “clearly more serious than a traditional cold”, also underlined infectious disease specialist Amesh Adalja.
Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax have developed updated vaccines, new versions better adapted to the variants currently in circulation.
Getting vaccinated was essential at the height of the pandemic, and there is general agreement that booster doses are beneficial to the most vulnerable. But the advisability of revaccinating young and healthy people is debated.
Almost the entire population has already been infected in Western countries, studies have shown. And these infections, along with vaccines, have trained the immune system to defend itself.
According to professor of medicine Monica Gandhi, undifferentiated recommendations for everyone might harm trust in the authorities. Messenger RNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna carry risks of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), particularly in young men.
Thus, the United Kingdom, France and Germany recommend an annual booster for groups at risk only.
Other experts believe that the risks involved are minimal. Even people with little risk of developing a severe case of the disease “benefit from anti-COVID boosters,” said epidemiologist Ziyad Al-Aly.
The United States is recommending a booster for the entire population this fall.
The issue of masks has sometimes become very sensitive, particularly in the United States.
According to analysis by a respected organization, Cochrane, promoting mask wearing has had no visible effect in slowing the spread of the virus.
But researchers know, thanks to laboratory tests, that a well-fitted, quality mask (N-95 in the United States, FFP2 in France, etc.) protects.
People can therefore choose to wear them indoors, although this is generally not necessary according to Monica Gandhi, given the protection provided by vaccines.
People at risk — the oldest, or suffering from pathologies such as cancer, obesity or diabetes — should continue to test themselves if they experience symptoms, experts agree. Because they might then benefit from antivirals, drugs which must be taken quickly at the start of the infection, so that it does not degenerate.
The main treatment is Paxlovid, from Pfizer.
Some countries believe that testing only people at risk is sufficient, such as the United Kingdom. Free tests are still provided for them.
But “most people no longer need to test themselves,” write the British health authorities. “To avoid spreading the infection, stay home if you feel unwell.”
Research on long COVID — symptoms that last for months — remains hampered by the lack of a definition on which everyone agrees, according to Amesh Adalja.
The prevalence is between 4 to 7%, or 65 million people worldwide, according to Ziyad Al-Aly. “Unfortunately, we have not made progress in curing long COVID,” he says. “This should be a priority for agencies around the world.”
It seems that being vaccinated reduces the risk of developing long COVID, which is often correlated with the severity of the infection.
The American government has funded several clinical trials to better understand this pathology. According to one of them, an antidiabetic drug helped reduce symptoms by 40%.
More results are expected in the coming months.
Apple plans to challenge the agency’s findings because independent third-party study results would prove that its devices meet the standards. This is a first for the American giant.
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