“In this season of respiratory infections we have had a perfect storm, a cocktail of viruses among which influenza was and is the main protagonist“. The virologist from the State University of Milan Fabrizio Pregliasco underlines this to Adnkronos Salute, commenting on the data from the latest weekly bulletin: infections more than halved, deaths dropped by more than a quarter. “For Covid the flare-up, caused by new variants such as Eris” EG.5 “and, then, JN.1, had started earlier. And despite having started to contribute to the overall curve drawn by the RespiVirNet monitoring, it was already decreasing”. Now the flare-up has passed, but it should be remembered that “Covid does not have a seasonality like the flu: regardless of the meteorological aspect, new variants appear every 4-6 months”. However, we must be careful, urges the expert, reiterating that “the Covid wave – like the circles that form around a stone thrown into the pond – decreases, but progressively”. Until the next 'rock', the next variant.
New pandemic plan
“It seems ridiculous and painful to me to contest a pandemic plan that seems absolutely reasonable to me” Fabrizio Pregliasco, virologist at the State University of Milan, tells Adnkronos Salute, commenting on the controversy surrounding the draft of the 2024-2028 pandemic plan prepared by the Ministry of Health and being examined by the State-Regions Conference. “It is clear that in a pandemic plan, a whole range of progressive measures must be envisaged, to be adopted not by automatically triggering the most stringent interventions, but based on the picture that gradually presents itself, with a view to graduality”. Sterile controversies according to the expert, who also takes this opportunity to say enough to “retrospective denialism about the choices made in the most emergency phases of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
“Public health choices are always complicated and unpleasant“, reiterates the medical director of the Irccs Galeazzi-Sant'Ambrogio hospital in Milan. “Protection of health, protection of the economy and protection of psychological and social aspects are three elements that are difficult to balance”, he reflects. “The final decisions are up to the politicians – he specifies – called to find a mediation that necessarily ends up favoring one aspect rather than another, or one more than the others”.
The implementation of the new plan, Pregliasco underlines, will also depend on the nature of the next pandemic pathogen which “who knows what it will be. We expect 'disease X', but it is impossible to predict its characteristics”. Covid-19 taught us this: “We had plans oriented more towards the flu and its peculiarities, then the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus arrived with different and new characteristics, and took us by surprise. Let us remember this aspect of ignorance, of difficulty , of decisions that we had to make in an emergency – repeats the doctor – and which perhaps in hindsight, like all choices in life, may appear to us to be less than optimal” reasoning with hindsight. Doing so makes no sense, is the message.
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