In the heart of summer, the Covid-19 it is becoming an issue again in France and other countries as it is recorded increase in caseswhich is still small, but calls for caution.

Resurgence of the epidemic is also reported in the United States, the United Kingdom, but also India and Japan.

While it was out of the minds of most after more than three years and several waves of the pandemic, the SARS-Cov-2 virus has recently returned to the minds of some French people. And some indicators confirm this return.

In hospital emergency departments, arrivals with suspected Covid-19 rose by 31% in the week from July 31 to August 6 compared with the previous week, and cases reached 920, according to data from the French public health service.

“The numbers remain small,” the agency said. The summer or winter 2022 waves were accompanied by more than 4,000 hospital visits per week for this reason.

Also “medical operations with suspected Covid-19 have increased in all ages” and reached more than 1,500 at the beginning of August, an 84% jump in one week, according to the French public health agency.

Although the World Health Organization no longer considers the pandemic a global health emergency since the beginning of May, “the virus continues to circulate in all countries, continues to kill and change,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom pointed out on Wednesday Gebreges during a press conference.

The EG.5 version of the virus, dubbed Eris by some scientists, is now the one most closely watched because it could potentially lead to a new surge in cases. Summer concentrations and declining immunity may also play a role, according to some experts.

This sub-variant of the Omicron family appears to be more contagious than others in circulation—perhaps due to new genetic mutations—and may be better able to evade immune defenses.

“We have identified it in India, but also in other Asian countries, in North America, in Europe, where it tends to replace the previous dominant strains,” Antoine Flaut, director of the University of Geneva’s Global Health Institute, told AFP.

At this stage, “the available evidence does not show that EG.5 poses additional risks to public health compared to the other Omicron variants on the market,” according to the WHO.

However, “the risk remains that a more dangerous variant will emerge and cause a sudden increase in cases and deaths,” Tedros reminded.