- Written by Jim Reid
- health reporter
image source, Getty Images
The number of people in hospitals has increased. Google searches have doubled in a month, and additional vaccinations have been brought forward due to new variants. It may feel like 2021. But how worried should we be about Covid these days?
Marjorie, from Pembrokeshire, had survived the pandemic without contracting the virus until this month.
“I thought I had natural immunity,” she says.
“But I got it from my granddaughter, who had the same symptoms as me.”
In her case, that meant headaches, muscle pain, and loss of smell and taste.
“I never expected to be so weak and lethargic,” she added.
It’s impossible to know exactly how many people like Marjorie will be infected with the coronavirus this fall.
All of these drive-in testing sites have been closed for a long time, and the free boxes of lateral flow tests likely ran out months ago.
The Office for National Statistics’ infection survey, which tested random samples of the population, was abolished in March.
However, the number of people testing positive in hospitals across the UK is still being recorded, and the numbers have been gradually increasing since the summer.
“What does that tell us about the virus? It tells us that the virus is circulating, and it tells us that it still has the ability to make people very sick.” says Stuart McDonald, an actuary at consultancy LCP. The beginning of the pandemic.
On September 17th, 3,019 hospital beds in England were occupied by people infected with coronavirus. The number has tripled since July, but fell last week and is only a fraction of the 33,000 cases seen at the peak of the second wave in 2021.
About a third of those patients were primarily being treated for the disease, and most tested positive after being hospitalized for other reasons.
Why do some people become infected?
Hospital trends give us a very rough idea of how long the virus has been around and whether infection levels are rising or falling.
How likely we are to become infected and how sick we become is determined by a complex combination of factors, from genetics and age to lifestyle and the environment in which we live.
the study Published in Nature magazine this year It suggests that about 10% of the population carries a gene that can identify and eliminate the virus before obvious symptoms such as cough, sore throat or fever appear.
We have all built up varying levels of immunity over the past four years, depending on our vaccination record and exposure to the disease.
“There are probably no two people in this country who have the same vaccination history and COVID-19 history,” McDonald said.
“So I think it’s harder to predict what’s going to happen next than at any point in history.”
image source, Getty Images
Over the past three years, more than 175 million doses of various coronavirus vaccines have been administered.
Immunity begins to decline immediately after infection or vaccination. This is what makes this virus different from measles and polio, for example, which can be given lifelong protection by getting a shot in childhood.
The protective effect against new coronavirus infection is likely to last only a few months at most. Data shows protection against Severe illnesses last longer.
One reason for this is that the virus itself is constantly changing.
Previous waves have been caused by different forms, or variants, that have undergone multiple genetic changes.
These mutations can change the way the virus behaves, for example, making it spread faster.
But importantly, they can also make it harder for our immune systems, which are primed to react to older versions, to recognize and fight them off.
In late 2021, the Omicron variant did just that, infecting millions of people, but the wave did not lead to a significant spike in hospitalizations or deaths.
“There is no doubt that exposure to the virus, either through vaccination, infection, or a combination of both, reduces the severity of infection,” said Alex Richter, professor of clinical immunology at the University of Birmingham.
Recently, we’ve seen a series of small waves caused by Omicron’s relatives (or subvariants).
In August 2023, scientists around the world began tracking the spread of yet another version with numerous mutations.
How well protected are we?
But the new jab will only be available to people over 65 (last year it was over 50) and people with certain health conditions. Dr Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol, says this is a tactical decision.
He said, “If young people who have already been infected and vaccinated become infected with the new coronavirus, [again]you might catch a cold and cough and miss a few days of work.
“There is no real value in spending so much time and effort on vaccinating people again when health services have so much else to do.”
In reality, most people under the age of 65 will develop immunity through repeated exposure to the coronavirus, rather than through vaccination.
Residents of Stoneswood Housing in Oldham to receive coronavirus booster jab this autumn
How worried should I be?
Professor Richter says now is the time to think of the new coronavirus like the flu. New strains of the coronavirus, some more severe than others, emerge every year, and new vaccines are being released to protect against the latest winter strains.
The coronavirus remains a problem for the most vulnerable people and hospitals, and hospitals will still have to respond to new waves of infections, she added.
“Some years the flu is bad, and some years the flu is good,” she says.
“A harmful dose is likely to occur once every four or five years.” [of Covid] You’ll need to sleep for a few days, but otherwise I think most of us will be fine. ”
Even if you are a healthy person, you are not completely at risk each time you ingest the virus. Some studies suggest that Increased risk of long-term coronavirus symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, and brain fog.
But, generally speaking, Professor Finn said new infections should feel milder as the duration of illness shortens.
“With each infection, immunity becomes stronger and more widespread,” he added.
Sam, an IT worker from north London, managed to catch his third infection while traveling to Turkey with his family this month.
“The first time was really bad. The second time it felt like the flu, but by the third time it didn’t bother me as much,” she says.
“I had a bit of a cold and wasn’t feeling well.”
Perhaps this is what scientists meant when they said at the beginning of the pandemic that someday we would have to learn to live with the coronavirus.
Viruses won’t go away.
But perhaps it is starting to become part of the background of our daily life.