Stories about covid started again in the middle of summer in France and other countries, with a moderate epidemiological jump of the infection for now, which calls for caution.
Resurgence of the epidemic has also been reported in the USA, Great Britain, India and Japan.
The SARS-Cov-2 virus, which disappeared from the minds of most people after three years of pandemic and several waves, is reappearing in France.
Some indicators confirm this jump.
In emergency services, suspected cases of covid jumped by 31 percent in the week of July 31 to August 6 compared to the previous week, with 920 cases, according to data from the French public health agency.
The public health agency said the number of infections remains moderate, indicating that waves in the summer or winter of 2022 are followed by more than 4.000 infections per week.
In doctors' offices, suspicions of covid-19 are increasing in all age groups, to more than 1.500 suspected cases at the beginning of August, which is a jump of 84 percent in a week.
Although the World Health Organization no longer considers the pandemic a global health emergency, the virus is still circulating in all countries, continues to kill and change, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The EG.5 version, which some scientists call eris, is currently the most commonly detected and could be the carrier of this spike in infection. Summer gatherings and declining immunity could also have an impact, experts said.
That substrain of the omicron family appears to be more transmissible than others in the circulation, possibly under the influence of new genetic mutations, and may be able to evade immune defenses more easily.
It has been identified in India, but also in other Asian countries, in North America and Europe, where it tends to take over from earlier strains, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva, Antoine Flaho, told AFP.
At this stage, the available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 poses an additional risk to public health compared to other circulating omicron strains, the WHO said.
But the risk remains that a more dangerous variant could emerge and cause a sharp jump in infection cases and deaths, Tedros said.
However, it is more complicated to monitor epidemiological fluctuations due to the lack of data, since the number of tests has decreased and monitoring systems have been discontinued.
"There is a thick fog about the epidemiological situation somewhat everywhere in the world. It is urgent that the health authorities re-establish a reliable system for health monitoring of covid", said Antoine Flao and advocated above all for the analysis of wastewater in Europe.
Over time and a series of waves of infection, the consequences of covid on hospitals and the number of deaths have decreased significantly thanks to the high level of immunity obtained from vaccination and infections, but they have not been reduced to zero and to this are added the cases of long covid.
Fleo believes that it is possible to prescribe tests for the elderly and people with immune difficulties in case of even mild symptoms so that they can receive early antiviral treatments, which are effective in reducing the risk of serious forms of the disease.
The WHO believes vaccination remains important and on Wednesday called for increased efforts to increase vaccination coverage.
Although anti-covid vaccines lose their effectiveness for getting infected over time, they are still thought to protect against serious forms.
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