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COVID-19: More work to be done, but no need to worry
As scientists continue to track emerging variants of COVID-19, which continues to mutate even after it lost its "global pandemic" status, people might need to start treating it like seasonal flu while maintaining the culture of safety developed over the last three years.
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Passengers, some wearing masks, disembark a train on Dec. 6, 2023 at Karet Station in Central Jakarta. The Health Ministry has advised people to wear masks amid a recent rise of COVID-19 cases and the detection of Mycoplasma pneumoniae cases in the city. (Antara/Putu Indah Savitri)
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round four years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease continues to affect us. Despite vaccines protecting us from severe disease, COVID-19 is still deadly for certain patients, mostly the unvaccinated.
SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, also continues to evolve, resulting in multiple new variants now circulating around the globe, and Indonesia could see new waves of infection in the future.
In neighboring Singapore, for example, the estimated number of local COVID-19 infections doubled to 22,094 from 10,726 in the week between Nov. 19 and 25, local health authorities said in a statement on Dec. 2. Cases requiring hospitalization and intensive care, however, remained stable.
As the WHO Disease Outbreak News on Nov. 23 states, the current season also marks the peak of respiratory virus activity. It is therefore not unusual to see resurgence of Mycoplasma pneumoniae, influenza, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and SARS-Cov-2 variants.
In earlier outbreaks, when more people were testing for COVID-19 and reporting their test results, the number of cases was a reliable and reasonable way of tracking the disease. A certain level of fatigue today, due to prolonged stress that has lasted more than three years, makes it much more difficult to predict the size and timing of peak infections.
Reduced access to COVID-19 testing and fewer reporting requirements indicate a wider range of possibilities.
The primary viral lineage this year is XBB, more commonly known as Omicron.
