For the third week in a row, the curve of Covid hospitalizations in Italy drops, with an overall -0.7% compared to the previous survey.
In this stable situation, however, there is an increase in hospitalizations 'due to Covid' of 9.6%, i.e. of those patients who arrive at the hospital because they have developed respiratory failure or pneumonia following the Sars-Cov-2 infection .
This is what emerges from the survey of sentinel hospitals belonging to the network of the Italian Federation of Healthcare and Hospitals (Fiaso) of 3 January 2023.
The number of patients under the age of 18 hospitalized in the 4 pediatric hospitals and in the pediatric wards of the hospitals of the Fiaso sentinel network also fell by 6.3% in one week.
But "next week the schools will reopen and there may be an intensification of viral circulation", explains the president of the federation, Giovanni Migliore.
86% of pediatric patients hospitalized 'With Covid', i.e. positive for Sars-Cov-2 but whose hospitalization was determined by another disease, are aged between 0 and 4 years.
Only one patient, according to the report, is hospitalized in intensive care 'With Covid' in the age group between 0-4 years.
Meanwhile, the variant of Covid XBB 1.5, also called 'Gryphon', runs in the USA: CDC experts estimate that it has gone from 4% to 41% of infections in the last month.
Cnn reports it, underlining that in the north-east of the country it now represents 75% of cases.
"We haven't seen a variant take off at that speed in a few months," said Pavitra Roychoudhury, director of Covid-19 sequencing at the University of Washington School of Medicine's laboratory of virology.
This
variant - virologists and epidemiologists warn - could cause a new wave of Covid in the US.
