Covid is still infecting and killing people. It kills some directly and some indirectly.
Some have died because the earlier waves of Covid monopolised the NHS, and stopped non-Covid patients from being treated. By the time that there were beds available, their illnesses, (such as cancer), had become untreatable.
Other indirect deaths are happening because Covid damages the immune system and gives other, unrelated diseases a “free pass”. (This continues long after the initial infection.)
Now, a new Covid variant, “Cicada”, is spreading. In severity, it is no worse than the Omicron strain, but it has many new mutations. These will give it the ability to evade early vaccines. It is therefore important for vulnerable people to get the latest Covid booster.
Cicada was first detected in South Africa in November 2024. This is not surprising, as several Covid variants have originated in that country.
In the 1990s, the government of South Africa had an unfortunate policy for dealing with the earlier HIV pandemic. It opposed the use of “expensive” anti-retroviral drugs. This led to HIV spreading widely among the population.
South Africa’s national statistical authority, “Statistics South Africa” estimated that by 2018, 19.0% of South African adults had HIV.
South Africa therefore has a huge body of people with compromised immune systems, (because HIV destroys the immune cells.)
Those poor people can be infected by SARS-Cov-2 and then have difficulty purging it from their bodies. It therefore has an extended chance to mutate.
As a consequence, new strains of Covid are likely to evolve in South Africa.
For more information, see the British Medical Journal paper “HIV and covid-19 in South Africa”, by Joseph Freer and Vanessa Mudaly, published on 27 January 2022.. BMJ. 376 e069807. doi:10.1136/bmj-2021-069807. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 35086921.