Yes, there is another wave of Covid: how to deal with the increasingly mild disease | Society

Covid again. Cough, masks, laziness, sneezing. In offices, in conversations, at medical consultations, and also in hospitals (to a lesser extent). The number of infections has been rising for just over a month, and the summer surge is beginning to repeat itself. These are inevitable fluctuations of the virus, which is included in the list of common diseases of mankind. The good news is that most of the time the illness becomes milder, similar to a cold or flu. But: the very elderly and vulnerable are still at risk and they and those around them should take increased precautions.

The latest report from the National Center for Epidemiology on respiratory diseases, published this Thursday, shows a clear increase in the number of infections in the previous week and confirms the acceleration over the last two. The estimated incidence rate through sentinel health centers, which are a representative sample for counting infections, increased from 57.7 to 74.8 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Two weeks ago it was 33.5. The percentage of positive tests at health centers for people with compatible symptoms is also increasing, from 12.5% ​​to 17.1%.

Rodrigo Abad, a family physician from the Spanish Society of Primary Care Physicians (Semergen), confirmed this increase in his own practice, as well as in colleagues he spoke with. “Many people presenting to primary care think they have allergies due to increased pollen counts, but in fact some of these cases are covid,” he warns.

The doctor recommends pharmacy tests, especially for those living with vulnerable people to take extreme precautions. It is the latter who have to be especially attentive to the symptoms in order to consult a doctor if they occur. For them, doctors may consider prescribing Paklovid, a drug that slows the progression of coronavirus in the initial stages.

They are the exception. For most infected people, there is no treatment other than mitigating symptoms, “as with any other viral process,” concludes Abad, who recalls that the risk of developing persistent disease still exists, although “the percentage also seems to be lower.” compared to the first waves.”

With the omicron variant predominant at the end of 2021 and the population largely infected, vaccinated, or both, the coronavirus is no longer the public health threat it once was. New descendants of this line mutate, spreading and causing rebounds, which are influenced by many factors: time elapsed since the previous infection, social interactions, vaccinations…

Rafael Toledo, professor of immunoparasitology at the University of Valencia, advises the population to assume that “the virus will always be there.” “It is therefore impossible to expect the number of incidents to remain stable throughout the year, there are small factors that cause them to increase. A slight decrease in immunity, either due to the time elapsed since the last vaccination or due to infection combined with social habits. We see that when these interactions increase, such as at Christmas or in the spring and summer, they increase. It’s unavoidable. And, logically, those options that are more transmissible than the previous ones will be imposed, otherwise they would not have done this, so there is no particular point in emphasizing this,” he explains. And he notes that when you look at the incidence curve, you see lower and lower troughs, as well as shorter and less pronounced peaks.

The symptoms remain the same (cough, slight fever, muscle weakness, sometimes sneezing, headache) and the prevention measures have not changed: it is better to be outdoors than in a crowded room, good ventilation, masks in case of symptoms or for vulnerable people, when the presence of social interactions. But, as with any virus with these characteristics, there is no guarantee that it can be defeated by living a normal life.

The population’s body is becoming more prepared to fight the pathogen, and the risk of serious illness is virtually reduced for those who suffer from other health problems. For those for whom any imbalance can provoke hospitalization and, in the worst case, death.

Increased number of hospitalizations

Hospitals are already accepting such patients. In these centers, the positivity rate has risen from 16.4% to 25.4% over the past week, and the hospitalization rate for Covid has increased from 2.2 to 3.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, which is still far from posing a challenge to health care capacity . “We are seeing an increase in the number of hospitalizations of patients at risk, frail, elderly, immunocompromised and with chronic diseases such as COPD and heart failure that are getting worse,” explains Juan Torres Macho, head of the department of internal medicine at the Infanta Leonor Hospital and Member of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI).

Covid pneumonia, which characterized the early years of the pandemic, killed thousands of people and overwhelmed intensive care units, is no longer seen in hospitals. When they occur, they are usually caused by bacterial overgrowth of opportunistic microbes that take advantage of the “pathway opened up” by the coronavirus, Torres Macho said. Covid cases in intensive care units are virtually non-existent, confirms Alejandro J. Rodriguez of the Spanish Society of Intensive Care, Intensive Care and Coronary Units (Semicyuc). Patients with respiratory failure are prescribed remdesivir, one of the drugs approved against SARS-CoV-2 that slows the progression of the disease.

It has been almost a year since the government ended the Covid health emergency. Officially it became just another disease, although it probably was that way for a while. He is acting like this now and specialists are still monitoring him to see how he behaves in the future. It will tend to be a seasonal virus, similar to those that cause the common cold, and more concentrated in the winter as interactions with people carrying the virus develop, Toledo said. But this is a hypothesis. What has been seen so far, starting in 2020, is a summer recovery similar to what Spain is currently experiencing.