“You’ve got some people who have received vaccines and so doctors assume that they’re not vulnerable anymore, but their immunity isn’t that strong because of their age or health conditions, and these are the people who are slipping through the cracks,” says Nash.
According to William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee, the majority of people now being hospitalized are typically vaccinated but fall into certain high-risk groups. “These are people who are older, frail, or younger patients who have underlying illnesses like heart or lung disease, or diabetes,” he says.
Ongoing Variants
New variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continue to emerge and become dominant in various parts of the world, often subtly changing the symptomatology of Covid in the process.
As an example, the latest Omicron subvariant, XBB.1.16, nicknamed Arcturus, contains an additional mutation in the spike protein that makes it more contagious than Omicron. First discovered in India, it was detected in 30 countries by early May.
While the Arcturus variant does not seem to cause more severe disease compared to other variants, it yields an inflammatory response in the body that tends to result in a high fever. In contrast, people infected with Omicron rarely expressed fever-like symptoms. In addition, Arcturus appears to cause conjunctivitis or inflammation of the outside of the eye, particularly in children.
There is currently no sign that SARS-CoV-2 will become more virulent, but scientists remain wary of how it might adapt in the future, particularly with the reduction in PCR tests impacting the amount of data available on Covid variants.
What Is the Current Situation With Long Covid?
Young, otherwise healthy people can still be at risk of developing long Covid from contracting the virus. A review paper in January 2023 estimated that approximately 10 percent of those infected go on to develop this condition. Through these estimates, it suggested that long Covid has impacted at least 65 million people worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic.
Studies on the disease have identified more than 200 different symptoms, with impacts on multiple organ systems.
The paper also estimated that the vast majority of long Covid cases are in people who initially reported a mild, acute illness. However, hospitalized patients have a greater probability of suffering from long-term symptoms, with 50-70 percent of those people going on to develop long Covid.
Vaccination appears to have a protective effect against long Covid, but 10-12 percent of vaccinated individuals still develop the condition. People aged 36 to 50 appear to be most vulnerable.
There are still no broadly effective treatments for the condition, but studies have shown that certain therapies can work well on specific symptoms. For example, beta blockers have been shown to help postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS)—the abnormal increase in heart rate after sitting or standing up reported by many patients—and low-dose naltrexone has been used to treat the neuroinflammation behind persistent headaches and brain fog. Non-pharmaceutical options, such as boosting salt intake for POTS and cognitive pacing techniques for brain fog have also been found useful. Investigations into a range of other potential treatments are ongoing, including antihistamines, anticoagulant regimens, and a drug called BC007 that may be able to tackle possible autoimmune causes of the condition.
How Can People Protect Themselves?
Shoshanah Jacobs, a biologist at the University of Guelph, says anyone concerned about the threat of Covid-19 can take simple precautions, such as wearing a mask in public, keeping their home well ventilated, and meeting outdoors for social events. Schaffner still advises older individuals, who may have weaker immune systems, to avoid going to indoor gatherings with large numbers of people.
“In our family, our children wear masks to school, we filter our home air, and when we meet up with folks who are outside our little social unit, we usually meet outside,” says Jacobs. “For things like traveling on airplanes, a good-fitting mask that can keep out as much of the different viral particles as possible is important to reduce the risk of getting Covid.”
