After two years of the Covid pandemic, we are used to reading good and bad news regarding the infection, often together. This is one of those cases, with a new set of symptoms that were previously detected in very low percentages, and which are now on the rise due to the spread of Omicron 5. However, it appears that the virus has mutated further and less often causes long-term effects, although scientists are currently divided on this point. But let’s go in order.
What is happening in Italy with the new wave of Omicron 5
The sub-variants of Omicron BA.4 and BA.5, better known as Omicron 4 and Omicron 5, have become dominant in many countries, such as the United States, and are preparing to do so also in Italy, where we are witnessing one new wave. This is the most contagious version of the virus ever, as data shows.
In the latest bulletins of the Ministry of Health and Civil Protection, the new infections have exceeded the quota 100 milawith the positivity rate around 30%. Every day almost one in three Italians who decide to swab in pharmacies, hospitals, doctors’ offices and analysis centers are positive. And it is easy to imagine that many symptomatic patients, fearing isolation, hide the results of home tests or do not undergo any tests.
The curve of hospitalizations e deaths is slowly recovering, and national authorities are starting to talk about the reintroduction of anti-contagion measures, such as the obligation to wear a mask in all closed public spaces. A return to origins that Italians do not like, but which could become necessary in the face of an increasingly out of control wave that could get worse with the end of the summer. Here are the regions where the virus runs and infects the most.
Omicron 5, after the initial legitimate doubts, was hailed by the press as the expected sub-variant of the “cooling“, That is, the one that should have led the Sars-Cov-2 to cause a common cold or in any case symptoms so mild as to make the isolation and tracing of close contacts obsolete. The optimism quickly subsided in the face of the numbers coming from hospitals that do not hint to go down, but something actually is changed.
What are the new abnormal symptoms of the Omicron 5 sub-variant
The great success of the campagna vaccinal on the one hand and the continuous ones mutations of the virus on the other, have radically changed Covid. The virus is today more contagious – it is able to evade the protection provided by prophylaxis and previous infections – and it spreads more quickly, but its effects on the body, in the short and long term, seem very different from those of the onset of the pandemic.
Today the symptoms affecting the lower respiratory tract, i.e. bronchi and lungs, are less frequent. They have not disappeared, and it is necessary to underline it, but it is also fair to point out that those who become infected during this period develop more frequently fevereven high, but usually only for a few days, congestion nasal e sore throat. The loss of taste and smell has become less frequent, a sign of the first wave of infections.
There are other symptoms of which very little is spoken about. This is the tiredness and gods muscle and joint pain, already present from day zero of the infection and growing today. More and more patients complain of myalgia, in particular of the legs, with pictures not too far from those of the fibromyalgia – Covid, in addition to pain, can also cause fogthe mental fog that makes reasoning difficult – and of the restless legs syndrome.
Pain localized to the kneesat thighs and ai calves seem to be among the symptoms more characteristic of this new wave. But they are not immediately reported to the family doctor, nor are they considered by patients as a spy for Covid, although they often appear before fever and sore throat.
Omicron 5, fewer cases of long Covid: the confirmation of the English study
They are already known effects, we said, of the Sars-Cov-2 infection, and which often continue to occur in patients well beyond the period of contagion. Indeed, one of the worst consequences of the disease is long Covida syndrome characterized by the presence of characteristic symptoms of the virus despite the negativization of the patient.
The good news is that the Omicron variant and its sub-variants, according to a study conducted at King’s College London, would cause long Covid less and less often. The British scientists found out, using the data collected through the tracking application Zoethat the chances of developing PTSD are very different from the past.
Among the citizens of the United Kingdom, during the current Omicron wave, there was an incidence of long Covid between the 20% and the 50% lower than in the period in which the dominant variant was the Delta. Although age and vaccination status seem to have a particular influence on this series. I vaccinated with at least two doses of the preparation appear more protected from this effect of the disease.
The research, published in the scientific journal The Lancet, however, shows that the number of long Covid patients is constantly growing. Despite the lower incidence, in fact, cases of contagion have also increased exponentially in the United Kingdom, and long-term patients who have become infected with Omicron and its sub-variants, such as BA.4 and BA.5, represent almost a quarter of the total.
It is therefore better not to let your guard down, and to continue to observe all the anti-contagion rules that we have learned in these two years of pandemic, using the masksperhaps the Ffp2 instead of the surgical ones, in case of gatherings or situations of risk, frequently sanitizing the mani e le surfacesand observing when possible the spacing social.
If it is true that today we know the virus better, it is necessary to underline once again that the effects of Sars-Cov-2 on our organism could be more devastating than we imagine, with symptoms that could arise even after yearsor last, as we are seeing, also for weeks o months after the infection. And pay attention to the symptoms “anomaly“Such as muscle and joint pain: they could be a sign of the infection.
And while in Italy we face the Omicron 5, abroad a new sub-variant has already been identified, of which we still know little, as explained here. In short, the virus is continuing to mutate, and it is not certain that more “bad” variants will not emerge. We talked about it here.