Covid-19 on the upswing: need to worry?

New cases of Covid-19 are growing rapidly and questions arise in all of us as to how serious the situation is.

In the first weeks of September 2023 in Italy, as in the rest of the world, there was a significant increase in Covid-19 cases (in the week 7-13 September +44,4% compared to the previous week, source theSole24ore). The increase in deaths (+5.3%) and admissions to intensive care (+18.2%) was, however, moderate.

How should this recovery be interpreted? And, moreover, should we be worried?

According to the monitoring of 7 September by the Istituto Superiore della Sanità on circulating coronavirus variants, 41.9% of CoViD-19 cases in Italy are now attributable to the Eris variant.

Eris is named after the Greek goddess of discord and is scientifically referred to as EG.5 . It is a subvariant of Omicron. known since early 2023, whose characteristic trait is a mutation on the Spike protein, called F456L, which appears to confer high transmissibility, although the symptoms of the infection are no different from those caused by the other Omicron variants, namely fever, sore throat, runny nose, muscle pain, and headache. Loss of taste and smell has been reported in some cases, as in the first Covid-19 variants.

Currently The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) stated  that 'the resulting levels of severe disease are unlikely to reach the peaks previously observed during the CoViD-19 pandemic, and it is also unlikely that variants (with mutation) F456L are associated with increased severity of infection compared to earlier variants, or reduced vaccine efficacy on severe disease'.

As far as vaccines are concerned, current anti-covid boosters have been adapted for variants descended from Omicron XBB, which are genetically similar to EG.5 (Eris). In addition to providing effective protection against severe disease and death, as the two strains are not identical but are nevertheless quite similar, it is very likely that the boosters will still provide a good level of protection.

On Covid-19 on our site you can find

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