Is it over in Europe or has BA5 had its run and now to be overcome by BQ1 and whatever comes next, as for selling covid tests I have absolutely no idea if they can or can’t sell in Europe without EU commons approval. Technically it appears they can but without the trials to show it working in Europe not sure it would be all that easy to do.
As shown below some data on variants and cases between last wave and latest that is beginning (September-now) showing a new uptick in cases again beginning in Europe and Japan.
The variant that was dominant in last wave BA5 now slowly being superseded with the newest strains and cases going back up.
These are facts it is not over but thankfully so far doesn’t seem to have become more deadly in majority of population. Some will get no symptoms, some will get short illness, some will get long covid and some will die. The other statistic that should be of interest is hospital cases seem to be staying on a stubborn trend line and never dropping back to zero in many parts of the world that report this data.
As for reinfections this is hard to gauge as many don’t report it, but if looking at Europe which has had huge amount of cases in population and dropped restrictions much earlier then NZ they are still having large new waves. Not sure NZ is the best country to gauge this as they were one of the last drop restrictions and have their first large wave so immunity via infection and vaccination should be reasonably good still.
Will shut up on covid for now until they sell some tests or get multiplex going it is rather irrelevant to anything on here other then disappointment that the test isn’t being utilised. But unfortunately Covid is not over, and likely never will be.
If anyone wishes to track data out of interest the best place I have found is the link below it is becoming much more patchy now as less countries report cases/deaths/hospitalisations.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#explore-the-global-situation
