Episode #98 - COVID-19 evolving variants and how to stay safe

4 May 2023 | Science conversation

Vismita Gupta-Smith, WHO Communications

We are seeing rising number of COVID-19 cases in many parts of the world. What does that mean? How is the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolving and what does it mean when we say that the world must now learn to live with COVID-19?

Hello and welcome to Science in 5. I am Vismita Gupta-Smith. We are talking to Dr Maria Van Kerkhove today. Welcome, Maria.

Let's start with these rising numbers of COVID-19 that we are seeing in some countries. Maria, talk to us about what does that mean?

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead COVID-19, WHO Health Emergencies Programme

Hi Vismita. Thanks for having me back again. There are a number of reasons why we're seeing increasing cases in a number of countries.

First is that the virus continues to evolve. Since Omicron first emerged, we've had more than 900 sub lineages of Omicron in circulation, and we're tracking each and every one of those, and we'll come to those in a moment.

The other reason is that we have a lifting of public health and social measures. So people are living their lives and they're living their lives as safely as possible because we have increasing vaccination coverage around the world and we have increasing level of immunity from vaccination and-or past infection.

But that immunity does wane over time, which means people can be infected. And the combination of variants that emerge that have increased transmissibility, which means they can infect people more easily because there are properties of immune escape, means that people can be reinfected again. So this is something we will have to deal with going forward.

Right now, we are seeing an increase in case reporting from a number of countries around the world. For example, one of these countries is India. And one of the reasons why we are seeing an increase in case detection is likely because of the sub lineage XBB.1.16. XBB.1.16 does have increased transmissibility, but we have not yet seen a change in severity.

Another reason why we're likely seeing an increase in case reporting from India is because one of the last big waves of infection that India experienced was the Delta wave.

And that was quite some time ago. While we are seeing an increase in case reporting in a number of countries around the world, we are not really seeing an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. It's not true in all countries. We still see hospitalizations and at the present time we estimate that hundreds of thousands of people are in hospital each week due to COVID-19.

But because we have access to diagnostics, early clinical care and the use of antivirals and safe and effective vaccines, people who are infected or reinfected with SARS-CoV-2 are not dying as frequently as they were in the beginning of this pandemic when we didn't have treatments and we didn't have vaccines.

Vismita Gupta-Smith, WHO Communications

Maria talked to us about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus is evolving.

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove Technical Lead COVID-19, WHO Health Emergencies Programme

We need governments to ensure access to rapid diagnostics and making sure that people are tested very quickly so that they get into the clinical care pathway, that governments have access to these antivirals so that people can be treated very quickly so that they don't develop severe disease.

We have to work on increasing primary vaccination coverage, particularly in low and middle income countries. And we have to ensure those who are most at risk for severe disease receive the boosters according to need.

We also need governments to focus on surveillance to ensure that we are tracking this virus.

As individuals, it's really important that you know what your risk is and you take steps to lower your risk as you're living your lives.

First and foremost, get vaccinated and get boosted if it is recommended for you. It's not only important if you are vaccinated, but when your last booster was. And take measures to keep you and your loved ones safe. And remember, we're also concerned about post COVID-19 condition and the potential effects of repeat infections. There is a lot more that we know about this disease four years in, but there are still quite some uncertainties.

Vismita Gupta-Smith, WHO Communications

Thank you, Maria. That was Science in 5, today. Until next time, then stay safe, stay healthy and stick with science.