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When sars-cov-2 first emerged over two years ago, many people assumed that the virus would behave like the viruses that cause the flu: infections would occur especially in the winter months when we are close together in indoor spaces. .
The practice is different. There are currently in the Netherlands almost a thousand corona patients in hospitals. “I know of no virus that causes so many hospitalizations and deaths for such a large part of the year,” tweeted professor of infectious diseases Chantal Bleeker-Rovers Saturday.
“The way the pandemic is developing is unexpected,” Harvard epidemiologist Stephen Kissler admits in The Guardian. Kissler co-wrote a paper at the start of the pandemic that predicted that corona would become a seasonal disease.
Two years later, he thinks differently. Kissler is amazed at the speed with which new variants follow one another. For example, the Netherlands has had to deal with various Omikron waves in the past six months, each time caused by a new sub-variant.
The next wave of BA.2.75 or Centaurus already seems to be on its way. New variants also easily circumvent the built-up immunity, as the reinfections with Omikron show.
The good news is that death rates are no longer as high as they were in the pandemic. But the burden of disease is still great. Bleeker-Rovers points out that many people, including the non-vulnerable, are ill for considerably longer than from a cold.
As a result of the infections, hospitals are faced with staff loss. This makes it complicated to make up for arrears in care.