covid’s long tail

While we have moved on with life as Covid appears ahead in the rear-view mirror, the health hazards it poses are not over yet. A Twitter thread by Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, has underscored the concern. Kerkhove marked a 15% increase in COVID cases and a 35% increase in deaths globally over the past four weeks, and said cases would continue to occur because of limited use of public health and social measures. Also, while the Omicron BA.5 variant is dominant, spotting the new variant will be challenging as the testing drops. It’s likely that the new mutations will be more transmitted, perhaps even able to overtake our immune systems, he said, even though the severity of their infection is hard to predict. Kerkhove’s caution seems to be aimed primarily at the US, whose Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently relaxed its guidelines so rapidly that it prompted people to learn to live with Covid. But his words should not be lost on us in India, where pandemic fatigue has also loosened the outlook, even though cases have been on a slow but clear trend. Sure, the level of risk is not the same as last summer, but health prudence still demands our vigilance.