Thus, in October, infections of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus responsible for the disease that we have come to know as COVID-19 — increased by 19,000 across the world, compared to the month of September. These figures come from the World Health Organization (WHO) dashboard, but they are much lower than reality. On the one hand, because several countries no longer provide the WHO with their weekly or monthly compilations. On the other hand, because in most countries, we have stopped tracking the number of cases since the disease ceased to be perceived as an emergency.
“We do not have a complete picture of the circulation of the virus or the variants that are there,” laments the director of the epidemic management department at the WHO, Maria Van Kerkhove. “I think there is collective amnesia at the moment in the face of COVID,” she adds in an interview for the scientific journal Nature.
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If there is no monitoring, it is not only a statistical portrait that the health authorities of each country are missing; it’s a snapshot of the variants that are dominant at this time of year, as winter begins and people spend more time indoors.
On the other hand, in theory, hospitalizations continue to be counted. Failing to have an accurate portrait of the circulation of the virus, we should therefore have one of the most severe cases.
In addition, because analyzes of the genome of the virus continue to be carried out, it is possible to say that the variant which circulates most often throughout the world is the XFG, also called Stratus: it represents three-quarters of the officially recorded cases, and it dominates in Europe and the Americas. It is followed distantly by NB.1.8.1, also called Nimbus, which represents 15% of cases and is mainly present in the western Pacific region. They are the first variants since 2023 to be given their own nickname, reflecting the fact that virus experts have noticed that they stand out from the crowd.
Epidemiological data, however, show that neither of the two variants is responsible for a higher percentage of severe cases than the previous variants. On the other hand, their recent mutations make them more transmissible, which could explain the increase in the number of cases which has appeared on the radars since this summer. This is why a COVID vaccine continues to be recommended for older adults, especially as winter approaches.
