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Omicron sub-variant BA.5 remains dominant in every global region, with waves of infection shortening in time but increasing in transmissibility and speed. What can we therefore expect after our Northern hemisphere summer holidays as we head toward colder climes?
“Living with COVID-19 doesn’t mean pretending the pandemic is over. If you go walking in the rain without an umbrella, pretending it’s not raining won’t help you… Likewise, pretending a deadly virus is not circulating is a huge risk” (i)
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO)
Europe is now approaching its third winter of COVID-19 pandemic and scientists and senior WHO officials are warning us to brace for yet further spikes in COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths.
Variant B.1.1.529, known as Omicron, has been the dominant global Variant Of Concern (VOC) since late last year. It is highly divergent with a high number of mutations. Its subvariants BA.5 and BA.4 have proven especially pervasive, being more transmissible than their predecessors, and in the last 30 days Omicron has accounted for 90.1% of cases sequenced, with the remaining 9.9% presumed also to be Omicron.
Adam Kucharski, epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine urges us to set aside the idea that the pandemic is over. He and other experts see COVID turning into an endemic threat that continues to cause a high burden of disease. (ii)
While all global regions have seen a general fall in weekly cases, Hans Kluge, Director of WHO’s Office for Europe recently warned the region is projected to reach 250 million cases in following weeks after it recorded a third of all global deaths last week i. Indeed, the Russian Federation reported 288,580 new cases last week - an increase of 23%, perhaps denoting the start of things to come?
In the southern hemisphere, in Taiwan, new daily infections have exceeded 30,000 for three consecutive days; a trend predicted to peak at 60,000 around mid-September.
The southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu has ordered a four-day testing lockdown of its 21.2 million residents in an urgent measure to contain rising infections, and Japan and the Republic of Korea have seen deaths increase by 23% and 25%, respectively. (iii)
All this as Australia reduces its isolation rules to five days (providing no obvious symptoms prevail) and ends mask wearing on planes from 9th September.
A report released last week by the Imperial College of London, however, suggests five days is not long enough to curb transmission. Their recent study showed five days to be an average infectious period where one-in-five participants were infectious before symptoms developed and 23.5% continued to shed infectious virus at seven days. They, therefore, recommend that people isolate for five days after symptoms begin but use lateral flow tests to safely leave isolation.
Looking back to August, we also saw the term ‘rebound’ come to the fore after US President Joe Biden returned to COVID-19 isolation measures for - what was reported to be - a rare case of rebound symptoms following treatment with the anti-viral drug Paxlovid.
While there is little real-world data on the percentage of people who experience rebound, and there have been many calls to better define it, a pre-print study by Deo et al. found that rebound is not necessarily isolated to those who have been treated with antivirals. It is, in fact, relatively common. (v)
Imperial College of London recommends people isolate for five days after symptoms begin and then use lateral flow tests to safely leave isolation. (iv)
While we await more scientific peer-reviewed research and real-world data to understand transmissibility, rebound, and appropriately effective isolation times, it remains true that the ability to quickly detect COVID-19 through sensitive testing is ever-central to preventing further waves.
At 2San we believe that testing negative before resuming normal daily activities, like work and school, is essential to preventing transmission and we work with governments around the world to provide guidance on rapid responses to healthcare threats.
The 2San Scan & Protect app enables employees to take control over their own COVID testing and empowers the individual to return to work with confidence.
If you would like further information on how we can help, please contact our team at www.2san.com/get-in-touch
i) https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/08/1125912
ii) https://globalnews.ca/news/9028883/covid-pandemic-future-expectations/
iii) https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update-on-covid-19---31-august-2022
iv) https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/239212/covid-19-long-infectious-when-safely-leave/
v) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.01.22278278v1
