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Levels of the new coronavirus are between two and 19 times higher than those reported worldwide, WHO officials said on Friday, citing wastewater data.
The news comes as the group warns of the as-yet-unknown dangers of repeated coronavirus infections, which can occur without symptoms.
Most people have some degree of immunity to the new coronavirus through vaccination or previous infection, so “we don’t necessarily know how often people are infected,” the WHO said in a statement on emerging diseases and zoonoses. said Dr. Maria van Kerkhove, head of the department. Press conference in Geneva.
“What will happen in terms of heart damage, lung damage, neurological damage five, 10, 20 years from now? We’re in the fifth year of the pandemic, and there’s still a lot we don’t know about the pandemic. there is.”
Concerns about COVID-19 are multifaceted, she said, and include potential acute effects such as hospitalizations and deaths, as well as prolonged exposure to the virus and what she referred to as “further long-term effects.” Stated.
It is estimated that 6% to 10% of people infected with coronavirus will develop long-term COVID-19 infection, he added.
“It’s real,” she said of the condition. “It’s not something that’s in someone’s head. This is actually a real condition that needs to be properly studied.”
the pandemic continues
Whether we like to admit it or not, the world is still in a pandemic, Van Kerkhove said, noting that viruses, like many respiratory pathogens, do not have seasonal patterns and continue to evolve rapidly. I mentioned that there are.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of people are currently hospitalized with the virus around the world, and about 10,000 people have died from the virus in the last month, and likely many more, she said. COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU admissions increased by 42% and 62%, respectively, in December.
This world is currently experiencing a rapid increase in JN.1. Some say the highly mutated Omicron spawn deserves new Greek letters from the WHO, like Pi and Rho. The United States is currently experiencing the nation’s second-largest pandemic wave.
Van Kerkhove said the ongoing impact of the coronavirus remains underestimated. He said the death toll was based on data from only 50 of the 234 countries still reporting to the WHO. There are only 29 people hospitalized, and only 21 of his patients, less than 9%, are reporting ICU data.
Of the 10,000 coronavirus deaths reported to the WHO in December, “more than half were Americans and 1,000 were Italians,” she added. “We are missing deaths in countries around the world. Just because countries are not reporting deaths does not mean deaths are not occurring.”
Despite the failure of so many countries to report data, some countries still create and publish reports, so “unfortunately, we scrape the web and find each report. I’m back to things like adding to dashboards,” she said.
As of December 31, the official death toll from the pandemic remained at 7 million. But the actual total is likely to be at least three times higher, she said.
Hospitalizations and ICU admissions due to virus infections at recent holiday gatherings should still increase, at least in the short term. The WHO said the new coronavirus, when combined with other seasonal respiratory pathogens such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and parainfluenza, and bacterial infections such as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, would pose “too great a burden on countries”. I am concerned about this. However, Van Kerkhove says much of the burden can be prevented through mitigation measures such as vaccination.
More severe variants are still possible
When asked about research published in a journal cell Van Kerkhof, who this week raised the possibility of more severe disease caused by the highly mutated variant BA.2.86, the “parent” of the globally dominant variant JN.1, said the WHO It said it was reviewing the data before publishing the risk assessment. 2.86 in November. The risk assessment says the global risk posed by this variant is “low.”
She noted that the study was based on pseudoviruses, or viruses created in a lab. Viruses can behave differently in the real world if they encounter factors such as pre-existing herd immunity or human behavior.
“People have no indication that the severity of JN.1 is changing,” she says. Hospitalizations and deaths are rising, but experts are unsure whether this is due to the severity of specific variants or whether they decline, on average, three to six months after infection or vaccination. It is unclear whether this is due to a decline in herd immunity.
Still, the world is unprepared in case more severe variants of the virus evolve, because countries no longer view the coronavirus as a global threat, he said. As a result, there is no agility to “scale up and down” the flow of tests, antiviral drugs, medical oxygen, and other necessary supplies.
“We are extremely concerned that this virus is spreading unchecked around the world and that variants could emerge at any time and cause severe illness,” she said. Ta. “This is not intended as a scare tactic. This is a scenario we are planning for.”
WHO’s SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution Technical Advisory Group (TAG-VE), which is responsible for designating variants of concern and assigning Greek letters, will meet again on Monday, he added.
Van Kerkhof said in an exclusive interview on December 30th. luck WHO said it is ready to assign new Greek letters as soon as necessary. But the organization is looking forward to “truly different” variants – variants that have an impact on public health, she said at the time.
“For example, if we see some change in severity, we would not hesitate to call this a VOC and the next one a VOC,” she said. “But phenotypically, we’re actually seeing similar behavior to other circulating variants.”
Van Kerkhove said TAG-VE is devising a new subspecies classification system that it hopes to debut later this year. We discuss different ways to group variants, taking into account how similar they are genetically, what important mutations they carry, and the symptoms they cause.
But for now, classifying variants deemed by the WHO as of concern as VOCs (something the WHO has not done since November 2021) does not mean that they are “really, really different and really serious”. “If there is, it’s working very well,” she said.
“If we find a variant that falls under the VOC classification, we will notify you within a day,” she added. “We will do so in a heartbeat without any hesitation. …Just because we haven’t named it doesn’t mean it’s not a threat.”
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