As the weather cools in the northern half of the planet and people spend more time indoors, COVID transmission rates are once again on the increase. The repetition from autumn 2024 raises the prospect that COVID will settle into a pattern of seasonal transmissibility.
Based on UK data, we can see that COVID rates have not been this high since the lead-up to November 2024.
If the 2025 pattern follows that of 2024, COVID rates will peak in November and will have markedly trailed off by December.
The pattern marks a subtle difference from seasonal influenza. Flu transmission rates typically peak in the middle of winter.
Other European countries are also showing elevated levels of COVID in the community. This can be determined via wastewater testing.
Like in the UK, transmission rates in Austria are climbing to their highest levels since November 2024; the pattern is the same in Germany and France. Denmark has already surpassed its transmission rates from late 2024.
It may be coincidental that COVID rates are peaking in Europe at the same time in 2024 and 2025. However, the apparent seasonal entrenching of the coronavirus is a concern not just because of the fatalities – which vaccines of course greatly reduced – but because there is now more and more evidence emerging of long-term health consequences from coronavirus infection.
A study published on Friday, based on survey results from a hospital in Qatar, found that three-quarters of health workers at the hospital reported symptoms of long COVID.
There has been progress in identifying the causation of long COVID. A recent pre-print from a study at Massachusetts General Hospital found elevated levels of viral antigens and small blood clots – dubbed “microclots” – in the blood of children reporting long COVID symptoms.
Lastly, a JAMA study, also published Friday, found that sick leave absences in the US have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. In the words of the researchers, “These findings suggest that COVID-19 may have created a new year-round baseline for work absences that is similar to influenza season conditions before the pandemic.”
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