As colder weather sets in, Covid rates are over again rising across the Northern Hemisphere, with several latest variants on the scene.

Here’s what it’s essential know.

The Covid pandemic extracted a terrible toll, with nearly seven million deaths worldwide.

But due to vaccines, prior immunity and higher treatments, the virus is now much more manageable. In america, excess deaths — the full number of individuals dying for any given cause — has been normal since spring.

“When you asked me to choose from getting flu and Covid, I might pick Covid because each individual case of flu is more dangerous,” said Ashish Jha, a former White House Covid coordinator and dean of public health at Brown University.

But while Covid is now less deadly to individuals, “it also seems to have higher rates of long run complications.”

Covid can be less seasonal than the flu, more contagious, and over the past three U.S. winters peaked from December to January, while flu peaks later.

Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, placed Covid “on par” with flu and RSV, but stressed it was more severe than the common cold.

Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax have developed latest vaccines that more closely goal current variants, all offshoots of Omicron which became dominant in late 2021.

There may be broad consensus that annual boosters will profit probably the most vulnerable. But whether they bring about added value to everyone seems to be debated.

Nearly everyone has already been infected, studies show. And prior infections combined with vaccines have trained immune systems to stop severe outcomes even when they can not ward off infection.

One-size-fits-all recommendations now not make sense, and will decrease trust in public health, said Monica Gandhi, writer of “Endemic: A Post-Pandemic Playbook.”

For instance, the mRNA vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna carry small risks of heart inflammation in younger men.

European nations advise annual shots just for higher risk groups, but some experts don’t see downsides in wider recommendations.

“People at low risk still derive profit from boosters,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. The USA recommends that almost everyone get annual Covid shots.

Experts diverge on this subject, one of the crucial controversial of the pandemic.

A review of clinical trial data by the respected nonprofit Cochrane on whether promoting mask-wearing helped slow respiratory viruses found inconclusive results.

Whether broad mandates have a major effect, subsequently, hasn’t been proven.

What researchers do know — due to lab experiments — is that well-fitted, high-caliber masks corresponding to N-95s protect individuals.

“Individuals can subsequently decide to wear well-fitted and filtered masks indoors to supply personal protection from respiratory pathogens,” said Gandhi, a professor on the University of California, San Francisco — though she believes in vaccines to stop severe disease, including among the many high-risk.

Experts agree that it is sensible for people in danger — the elderly and people with conditions corresponding to cancer, obesity and diabetes — to check once they have symptoms.

That is because these groups “would profit from antiviral therapy throughout the five-day window,” said Adaja.

Essentially the most distinguished treatment is Paxlovid, which has been shown to scale back the chance of severe disease and death amongst high-risk people.

Some health systems have decided testing at-risk people is all that is needed.

“Most individuals now not must take a coronavirus test. To stop the spread of infection, you must try to remain at home when you’re unwell,” says the UK’s National Health System.

Research around long Covid — symptoms that linger for weeks or months — stays nebulous and hampered by an absence of standardized definitions for a condition that has multiple causes, said Adalja.

Al-Aly estimates prevalence at between 4-7%, or 65 million people worldwide.

“Unfortunately, we now have not made progress on treating long Covid. This needs to be an urgent priority for research,” he said.

It does appear that prior vaccination reduces the chance of long Covid, and that the condition is correlated with severity of infection.

The US government has funded several trials into the condition, with one recent study finding a diabetes drug called metformin reduced the chance of ongoing symptoms by 40%.

Jha said he was hopeful of more data on treatments in the approaching months.