The fifth wave of Covid finally seems to slow down its course and after reaching its peak in mid-July a few days ago, it has begun to descend. In a week, the decline in positives was about 15%, but the numbers are still very large: over 600 thousand new positives in 7 days, with the wake of hospitalizations and deaths that will rise for a few more days. It will therefore be a summer, the first, of tiring coexistence with Covid which at the level of infections – according to experts – should grant a respite only in a month, therefore after mid-August when cases should finally return under control.
After the peak, the slow descent begins
After 595 thousand cases in the week from 30 June to 5 July and 728 thousand (+ 20%) in that from 6 to 12 July, 623 thousand new positives were recorded in the last seven days: a decrease of almost 15 percent. A sign that the peak has been exceeded and the descent from the plateau of cases has begun. The next step will be to see the Rt contagion index drop below 1, that is, below the epidemic threshold that signals the exponential growth of cases: at the moment, according to the latest ISS report last Friday, the RT is at 1, 34. «It will take three weeks – explained the physicist Giorgio Sestili – to see the Rt index calculated by the ISS fall below 1 “. In any case, most epidemiologists agree that it will take at least a month and therefore beyond August to finally see the number of infections return to the levels of early June when 10-15 thousand cases were traveling per day. A truce therefore that will arrive almost at the end of the summer, unlike what happened in the past two years when Covid slowed down from June to restart from mid-late August.
The decline in hospitalizations and deaths only between 7-15 days
Meanwhile, hospitalizations continue to grow with the usual delay of about 7-10 days compared to infections, which in the last week recorded an increase of 17% in ordinary wards and 15% in intensive care, but if in the former the numbers are important (the 10 thousand hospitalized threshold has been exceeded) in resuscitation cases remain limited (413 patients), a sign that the virus with the Omicron 5 variant is less pathogenic: “It is a reduced growth – adds physicist Sestili – and, considering that the peak of cases has been reached, in about a week we should begin to see that of hospitalizations ». On the other hand, the increase in deaths is still noteworthy, where 170 thousand deaths have exceeded since the beginning of the pandemic, “with a growth of 46% in the last week which mirrors that which occurred in cases about 20 days ago. Consequently, we will see deaths increase a little more – added Sestili – and we could begin to hypothesize the peak in about 15 days ».
Covid in the autumn will go on “in flames”
A significant novelty of this wave is that the infections are descending without particular restrictions – they have been removed almost everywhere (with the exception of transport, hospitals and work) and this is probably due, the physicist said, to “a ‘ widespread immunity that arises from the fact that almost all have been infected or vaccinated, even considering the small percentage of those who are reinfected after being infected with the first variants ». It is, added Sestili, “a new dynamic to which we will have to get used to, with rapid flare-ups in leading to a high number of cases and equally fast in descending”. This will probably also be the trend of next autumn, with «new waves probably determined by the arrival of new variants. Of the latter, we cannot know the nature, but it would be a mistake – concluded the physicist – to assume that they are less aggressive ».