Large number of COVID-19 reinfections in Northern Hemisphere ‘concerning’: WHO

globalnews.ca:

COVID-19 cases across countries in the Northern Hemisphere is causing concern for global health authorities, given that these regions usually witness a peak in respiratory illnesses during the winter months.The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday urged countries to strengthen their surveillance and reporting of COVID-19 amid the spike in hospitalizations in the last month, primarily in European nations.“The virus right now is reinfecting a large number of individuals — millions of people — each week,” warned Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on the COVID-19 response.

“We don’t have a good gauge on how many reinfections or infections there actually are because surveillance has declined. But we do have some indications on trends of impact.”Speaking at a WHO press conference on global health issues on Friday, she said there are a number of countries in the Northern Hemisphere seeing an uptick in cases.“Northern Hemisphere regions where we are in our summer period … and that is not expected when you are thinking of a respiratory pathogen like influenza that typically has peaks in the winter months,” she said.She called these cases “concerning,” especially as countries deal with other pressing issues, like health impacts from wildfires and extreme heat.“While we are certainly not in the same situation of the pandemic that we were in a year ago or two years ago, SARS-CoV-2 circulates in all countries right now and it is causing a large number of infections and reinfections or hospitalizations, admissions to ICU and deaths,” Van Kerkhove said.The warning comes as the WHO is monitoring several COVID-19 variants.For example, a new, highly mutated variant known as BA.2.86 (which stems from Omicron), has been