The covid autumn that awaits us: an eighth wave with the only weapon of the fourth doses of vaccines

The incidence has been stagnant for a few weeks, which could indicate that it is going to start to rise due to summer interactions The return to work and the start of the school year can act as an accelerator of infections With practically no restrictions, experts urge vaccination with anti omicron serums and to complete the third dose It has been the summer of reunions: with friends, family, with trips, festivals, concerts, town parties… The first summer without a mask or quarantines after the pandemic has multiplied social interactions. And, after the seventh wave, one would expect that the eighth is about to fall. Because that’s how covid is: it doesn’t have a season, like the flu, but it spreads throughout the year, with breaks of a couple of months between peaks. What will covid be like next fall? At the moment the drop in incidence has slowed down, the last report, from September 6, reflects that it has dropped 4 points and is the smallest drop since it began to drop after reaching the peak with omicron. They are only a few tenths, but while waiting for the next report, it seems that the covid has hit ground and that infections may start to rise as of this September. “Predictions with the covid are usually wrong, we have given it up for dead many times and that is not fulfilled”; warns Juan Antonio Sanz Salanova, spokesman for the Spanish Society of Preventive Medicine, Public Health and Hygiene (SEMPSPH), who adds: “The only thing that seems clear is that it is a disease that is going to stay with us.” “It is likely that as soon as we start sharing closed spaces there will be an increase in cases. The good thing is that the severity and mortality have decreased. It was expected, because the normal evolution of this type of virus is that: find its way of spreading without kill its host: covid will be more transmissible but less deadly,” argues Sanz Salanova. In other words, an eighth wave is likely to begin in a few weeks. The key is to know how to mitigate it, or how serious it will be. Daniel López Acuña, former director of Sanitary Action in Crisis Situations of the World Health Organization, does not have it all with him: “The first thing is to understand that although the incidence decreases we cannot trust ourselves at all, we must be cautious about a rebound since a time begins in which many flatterers come together: People gather again in closed spaces due to the drop in temperatures. The virus is still active, we have not reached the end of the pandemic. More contagious variants may arise, but with the existing ones may already have rebounds. The protection of the vaccines is declining because many were given more than six months ago.” The spokesman for the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians, Lorenzo Armenteros, warns that this eighth wave is already beginning . “Although we do not have data on most of the positives, due to coronavirus, because we only know the incidence in those over sixty years of age, the cases that we see in consultations, the new cases in young people and the cases that could be added from self-tests that patients do, we would be in an eighth wave,” argued Armenteros. And already an eighth because, he has clarified, “an almost ghostly seventh wave has passed, disappeared because there was not enough data, so epidemiologically we would be in an eighth wave.” “That peak that is occurring in the last two weeks could indicate that there is a new wave in the making and it is already beginning to rise,” added the spokesman for family doctors. It is not and will not be a flu “The flu is seasonal , with an epidemic a year, and yet the covid in about three years has had seven waves”, states the expert, to emphasize his opinion that the covid and the flu are only comparable in their transmission mechanism and some symptom. Sanz Salanova recalls that after the great flu epidemic of 1918 the virus had several waves or tails, so the epidemiology of covid can still change. “Excessive mortality this year and this summer have been very high, and it is not for nothing attributable to the heat wave, but should be attributed directly or indirectly to the covid”, warns López Acuña. “You should not trust that this is a cold or flu. Thanks to vaccination, cases are less lethal. In 2022 there will be an excess of 13,000 deaths compared to pre-pandemic years,” he settles. The strategy “Very drastic measures cannot be taken again as in 2020, when mortality was very high and we also did not know anything about the disease,” says the SEMPSH spokesman. He agrees that vaccination should be supported: the vulnerable groups with the new immunizations adapted to the dominant variants at the time, and the youngest with the doses that are available. “If we manage to protect the elderly population, we will have a great impact on the target of covid. When we started vaccinating, as soon as it was given to the elderly, there were no more cases in residences and among the elderly. This demonstrates its effectiveness and that it is the adequate strategy,” he says. “We must undertake the vaccination of all those over 60 years of age and people with vulnerable health with the new sera adapted to variants. And very probably we will have to do a new round of vaccination: we should not wait and If the new vaccines are not available, immunity must be reinforced with the serums that are available,” López Acuña insists. Vaccination, for both experts, is what has managed to mitigate the severity of the waves. Sanz Salanova affirms that in his day to day, in the private sphere, “I maintain personal hygiene measures, and distance myself when possible. I am very aware of the evolution of the incidence and I am adapting, I am going to more or less “. López Acuña has not abandoned the mask in any interior space: “It is a barrier that protects me, and you also have to remain cautious in crowds, even outdoors.” The summer of 2022, the one of the return to normality, for him is not the end of the pandemic.