“We are now facing the worst variant of Covid”

Discreet for a few months, the Covid is starting to make a comeback in the daily life of citizens. This return is, in part, due to Omicron’s sub-variant, BA.5, hitting hard in the world. Dominant in China and the United States, it might affect nearly a million people a day and has led to a global increase in cases of 30% in the last fortnight, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) . A number that might ultimately be higher, given the low use of tests.

CNN took the opportunity to take stock of the virus and the least we can say is that the results may worry more than one. “This is the worst version of the virus we have seen“, says Eric Topol, cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine. For this American expert, this makes “immune evasion, already extended, to the next level and, depending on this, higher transmissibility”.

But what really differentiates BA.5 from the other sub-variants? First, BA.5 leads to more contaminations because it more easily escapes immunity from previous infections and vaccines. For Topol, hospitalizations will continue to increase, even if the variant would not cause more serious disease. “A good thing is that it doesn’t seem to be accompanied by the ICU admissions and deaths like the previous variants, but that’s really concerning.”

According to Topol, a “new batch of variants might come out of nowhere, similar to how omicron unexpectedly appeared in November with an amazing collection of mutations already grouped together. Inevitably, we might see a new family of Greek letters like omicron. There is still room for this virus to evolve. It has been evolving in an accelerated fashion for months now. So we have to count on it“, says the cardiologist.

A worrying neglect

In Belgium, as in several countries around the world, restrictions once morest Covid have become rare, if not non-existent. No more masks, tests before trips or other public limitations during big events.

And this neglect is beginning to worry on the other side of the Atlantic. Asked by the Wasington Post, Ziyad Al-Aly, epidemiologist at Washington University in Saint Louis, says that we must not let our guard down. “We have chosen, deliberately, to expose ourselves and make ourselves more vulnerable“. Before continuing: “I fear that by the time we have a vaccine for BA.5, we will have a BA.6 or a BA.7. This virus continues to thwart us.”

For Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunology at Yale University and expert in “long covid”, human behavior has its share of importance as reported by the Washington Post. “I fear it will lead to more people becoming infected and contracting covid long. I fear that this situation will lead to a large number of people with disabilities and chronic health problems in the future.”

Same story on the side of the WHO and its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Omicron subvariants, such as BA.4 and BA.5, continue to cause surges in cases, hospitalizations and deaths around the world. Surveillance has dropped significantly, making it increasingly difficult assessing the impact of variants on transmission, disease characteristics and the effectiveness of countermeasures.“. Before concluding :“New waves of virus demonstrate once more that Covid-19 is far from over.”