It might be worse than we think. From New Scientist:
"Some think the covid-19 pandemic is over – but it most certainly isn’t. On the contrary, around the world, the number of confirmed cases is rising rapidly again. The most concerning situation is in China, where many older people still have no immune protection of any kind and which is currently battling a major outbreak. So why are cases on the rise again, how bad will it be and what could happen next?
The omicron variant that first started spreading in November 2021 caused by far the biggest wave of the pandemic to date. Globally, reported covid-19 cases peaked towards the end of January this year, and they were falling nearly as fast as they shot up. But now they have begun to rise sharply again, up by 8 per cent in the week ending 13 March according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Because many countries are doing less testing than they did at the peak of the omicron wave, the actual increase could be even bigger than this, said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a briefing on 16 March. Deaths are still declining globally, but they are expected to rise again too; deaths usually lag cases by around three weeks.
The situation isn’t the same everywhere. In some nations that had big omicron waves, the number of reported cases is still falling. Notably, that includes South Africa, the first country to have an omicron wave.
The number of tests being done in South Africa has fallen sharply, from around 70,000 per day during early December to just 20,000 in early March. But the proportion of positive tests has fallen from 37 per cent to 7 per cent over this period, which indicates that case numbers really are falling.
In other parts of Africa, Europe and Asia, reported cases have begun to climb again. Some countries that had big omicron waves, including the UK, Germany and France, are seeing a resurgence before the previous wave has even subsided.
Breakdowns of case numbers by which virus variant is responsible show that while the initial wave of omicron was mainly caused by one of its subvariants called BA.1, the BA.2 subvariant is driving the resurgence. The term omicron refers to a whole family of related variants that appeared around the same time, rather than to one specific variant. BA.2 has been around from the start and is even better at spreading than BA.1.
“This is the most transmissible variant we have seen of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to date,” said Maria Van Kerkhove at the WHO during the briefing on 16 March. A study in Denmark found that people can be infected by BA.2 less than two months after having BA.1, but this is rare and may not be a major element in the overlapping waves.
BA.2 isn’t the only factor involved. “We’ve dropped all measures, so a resurgence is not very surprising,” says Aris Katzourakis at the University of Oxford, referring to the situation in England.
“Lifting of the use of masks, lifting of physical distancing, lifting of restrictions limiting people’s movement, this provides the virus an opportunity to spread,” said Van Kerkhove."
