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Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director)
After more than 2 and a half years of waves and new variants, it is now clear that Covid 19 reinfections will become the norm. Fortunately, they should also incur fewer risks at each passage, to be part of endemic diseases.
Since the beginning of 2020 and until today, you have probably already contracted the Covid. And if you haven’t already, you should probably catch it again. This is not a morbid prediction, but a reality linked to the mutation and evolution of the virus which seeks to survive by producing many variants month after month. The hindsight offered by these 2 and a half years spent under the covid era shows us that the first speculations on single episodes of COVID-19 offering immunity against future infections have long since disappeared.
The Covid, a coronavirus destined to stay with us
For Dr. Gérald Kierzek, emergency physician, the finding is not surprising or worrying. “I’ve been saying it for months, you can’t eradicate this Covid, and we’re going to live with it, simply because it’s part of the respiratory viruses, and you can’t remove the air” he recalls with lucidity. “It is confirmed to us month after month with the waves coming and going, with mutations and an escape of the immune system”.
Last variant in the running? The famous BA.5 which currently escapes the immune system and affects people, both those vaccinated and those who have already had covid, with increased contagiousness. “That’s not worrying though, reacts the emergency doctorwe are finding a balance between the virus and the human being where everyone is trying to survive”.
More frequent but less serious infections
In this context, covid-related infections promise to be more frequent, much more contagious (the last variant would be transmitted easily even outdoors), but are fortunately offset by a less serious and much less lethal impact. “Covid today is a mortality rate of 0.46%, it’s really low” reassures the emergency physician.
In fact, we are approaching an endemic rather than a pandemic model, as the flu can be. “We still have to learn to live with this covid and to live without stress, with tenable and measured barrier measures” continues Gérald Kierzek.
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And is the vaccine still useful?
In the future, vaccines will remain useful as long as they are adapted to the strains, with undoubtedly, injections to be redone over time for the most fragile people, those most at risk. “But in this competition between the virus and the human being, we also have every interest in ensuring that people in good health and without any particular pathology continue to live at the risk of being contaminated, because that is how they will develop immunity” concludes the paramedic. Cohabitation seems inevitable.