Paris (AFP) – Far from the horror of the early days of the pandemic, which began four years ago, Covid-19 has become less dangerous, but it remains a major public health problem, with persistent specificities compared to other diseases.
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Normalization accelerates
The year 2023 marked a new stage in the normalization of Covid. The trend accelerated the previous year, after 2020 and 2021 dominated by a pandemic with historic effects.
Since May, the World Health Organization (WHO) has not considered Covid to constitute an international emergency. While he continues to affirm that the pandemic continues, that decision is highly symbolic.
The year also saw the end of “Covid zero”. China, the last major country to apply this exceptional policy, which aims to eliminate the circulation of the disease and not just limit it, abandoned it at the beginning of the year.
A much less dangerous virus
Why this normalization? Firstly, because a Covid infection seems much less dangerous today than in 2020, when numerous countries decreed unprecedented confinements against the deadly effects of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the epidemic.
It is the result of effective vaccines, distributed since 2021, and the immunity acquired by the population in successive waves of virus infections.
Fatality, which corresponds to the individual risk of dying after an infection, “decreased greatly compared to the pre-vaccine era,” Antoine Flahault, an epidemiologist at the University of Geneva, told AFP.
“It is on the order of one per thousand or perhaps less,” while the risk was counted as a percentage at the beginning of the pandemic, he emphasizes.
A level comparable to a seasonal infection with the flu virus, although it is risky to designate which of the two is the most dangerous.
A problem that continues to weigh
Covid became another respiratory disease. But it continues to pose important public health problems, sometimes due to its particularities.
Unlike other diseases like the flu, Covid experiences several waves a year. Therefore, it can hardly be described as a winter disease, but an outbreak can coincide with the classic epidemic season, as is the case at the moment.
“Covid-19 is one of the diseases that is currently progressing” in many countries, Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist, warned on Sunday.
This boom is partly related to the appearance of a subvariant: the JN.1, he explained. New decline of the omicron and dominant version of the virus for two years, it does not seem particularly dangerous but it is very transmissible.
Contagion remains high
In general, this is the great particularity of Covid compared to other infections such as the flu.
“In a year, there are between 5% and 10% of people who contract the flu,” but many more contract Covid, says Flahault, emphasizing that this mechanically increases mortality at the population level, even though the individual risk is limited. .
However, the exact number of deaths is unclear, as many are related to the disease but not attributed to it.
Official WHO figures indicate that since the start of the epidemic four years ago, around seven million people have died from Covid, but the organization itself admits that the real level is probably around 20 million or more.
And long Covid?
Beyond mortality, there remains the question of lasting consequences, called “long Covid”: fatigue, breathing difficulties…
The reality of these symptoms is no longer doubtful, just as it is known that their origin is physiological and not psychological. However, it remains difficult to determine their frequency and whether Covid causes them more frequently than other diseases.
The aftermath of the flu, for example, was not given as much attention, Flahault highlights.
In any case, several studies published this year are quite reassuring in denying the idea of an explosion of Covid cases over time.
A study carried out among the Swedish population, published in September in the 'Journal of Infectious Diseases', shows a “less elevated risk” of long Covid after an omicron infection, compared to previous variants.
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