COVID ranges are as much as 19 occasions greater than reported, WHO says because it warns of the potential risks of repeat reinfection: ‘We don’t know the whole lot about this virus’

The information comes because the group warns of the but unknown risks of repeat COVID an infection, which might happen with out signs.

As a result of most individuals have some immunity to COVID because of vaccination and/or prior an infection, “we don’t necessarily know how often we’re getting infected,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s rising ailments and zoonoses unit, stated at a news briefing in Geneva.

“Five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, pulmonary impairment, neurologic impairment? It’s year five in the pandemic, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.”

The issues concerning COVID an infection are multipronged, she stated, and embody potential acute implications like hospitalization and demise, the event of lengthy COVID, and “even longer term effects” like these she referenced.

It’s estimated that 6% to 10% of these contaminated with COVID will go on to develop lengthy COVID, she added.

“It’s real,” she stated of the situation. “It’s not in someone’s head. This is actually a real condition that needs to be studied properly.”

The pandemic continues

Whether or not we acknowledge it or not, the world remains to be in a pandemic, Van Kerkhove stated, citing the virus’s lack of a seasonal sample, as many respiratory pathogens have, and its continued, rapid-pace evolution.

What’s extra, tons of of hundreds world wide are at present hospitalized with the virus, and round 10,000 died from it final month, she stated—and sure untold extra. COVID hospitalizations and ICU admissions rose by 42% and 62%, respectively, in December.

This world is at present experiencing a surge of JN.1, a extremely mutated Omicron spawn some say deserves a new Greek letter from the WHO, like Pi or Rho. Within the U.S., it’s at present fueling the nation’s second largest wave of the pandemic.

COVID’s ongoing influence stays under-appreciated, Van Kerkhove stated. Loss of life figures are based mostly on information from solely 50 international locations and territories nonetheless reporting to the WHO, out of 234, she stated. Hospitalization figures come from solely 29. And solely 21—lower than 9%—nonetheless report ICU information.

Of the ten,000 COVID deaths reported to the WHO in December, “more than half were from the U.S., and 1,000 were from Italy,” she added. “We are missing deaths in countries from around the world. Just because countries aren’t reporting deaths doesn’t mean they’re not happening.”

As a result of so many international locations are failing to report their information however some nonetheless produce and publish studies, “unfortunately, we’re back to sort of scraping the web, finding each report, and adding them to our dashboard,” she stated.

As of Dec. 31, the pandemic’s official demise depend sat at 7 million. However the true complete is probably going at the least 3 times greater, she stated.

Within the close to time period, at the least, hospitalizations and ICU admissions ought to nonetheless rise because of viral transmission throughout latest vacation gatherings. The WHO fears that COVID—when combined with other seasonal respiratory pathogens just like the flu, RSV, parainfluenzas, and the like, and infections from micro organism like mycoplasma pneumoniae—locations “far too much burden on countries.” A lot of the burden, nevertheless, may very well be prevented with mitigation measures like vaccination, in response to Van Kerkhove.

A extra extreme variant nonetheless doable

When queried about studies published in the journal Cell this week that pointed to the potential for extra extreme illness from highly mutated variant BA.2.86—”dad or mum” of the globally dominant variant JN.1—Van Kerkhove stated that the WHO had seen the information earlier than it issued its risk assessment about BA.2.86 in November. That threat evaluation stated the variant posed a “low” international threat.

The research have been based mostly on pseudoviruses, or lab-created variations of the virus, she identified. Viruses typically behave in a different way in the actual world, when met with components like present inhabitants immunity and human habits.

“We don’t have any indication in people that there’s a change in severity for JN.1,” she stated. Whereas hospitalizations and deaths are rising, specialists are unclear if it’s as a result of severity of a specific variant or waning inhabitants immunity, which begins to say no three to 6 months after an infection or vaccination, on common.

Nonetheless, the world isn’t ready for a extra extreme variant of the virus, ought to one evolve, as a result of international locations now not see COVID as a world risk, she stated. Consequently, there’s no agility to “scale up and scale down” the circulation of assessments, antivirals, medical oxygen, and different essential provides.

“We are concerned—deeply concerned—that this virus is circulating unchecked around the world, and that we could have a variant at any time that would increase severity,” she stated. “This is not meant to be a scare tactic. This is a scenario we plan for.”

The WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE)—in control of designating variants of concern and assigning Greek letters—meets once more Monday, she added.

In an exclusive interview Dec. 30, Van Kerkhove advised Fortune that the WHO is able to assign a brand new Greek letter on a second’s discover, if essential. However the group is holding out for a variant that’s “truly different,” she said at the time—one which impacts public well being.

“If we were to see any change in severity, for example, we wouldn’t hesitate to call this a VOC, or the next one a VOC,” she stated. “But phenotypically, we’re really seeing similar behavior to the other circulating variants.”

TAG-VE is devising a brand new variant classification system it hopes to debut later this yr, Van Kerkhove stated. It’s discussing numerous methods to group variants, making an allowance for how genetically comparable they’re, which key mutations they possess, and the signs they trigger.

However for now, labeling variants the WHO deems regarding as VOCs—one thing the group hasn’t completed since November 2021—works “really well, should there be something that is really, really different, really severe,” she stated.

“If we were to see a variant that fell within our classification of a VOC, we would call it in a day,” she added. “We would do that immediately, no hesitation whatsoever. … Just because we’re not giving it a name does not mean it’s not a threat.”