Different COVID-19 variants cause different forms of infection, some serious, some mild. The severity of illness can also change depending on whether or not a person has been vaccinated.
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But severity can often be used ambiguously, even though it has become the measuring stick in which health experts assess COVID-19 symptoms in patients.
"What does COVID-19 severity mean?" Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, admitting to KCBS Radio’s Melissa Culross and Jason Brooks that it's a challenging question on Friday's "Ask an Expert."
"We can look at deaths, we can look at hospitalizations, we can look at long-COVID-19 symptoms," he said. "There are many ways to look at severity of COVID-19."
No matter how you look at it, the good news is that the number of severe cases is going down, he said, whether that means hospitalization, being in the ICU, or dying.
As immunity in the general population continues to increase, the average case of COVID-19 is becoming less severe.
The average case of COVID-19 has actually been consistently getting less severe over the last two years, due to vaccination, advancements in treatment, and immunity granted by previous infection.
"Our bodies are learning what this virus is and we're developing better treatments," said Dowdy.
The severity of illness can have an effect on how COVID-19 presents itself in the body after infection, he said. The more severe the case, the more likely a person is to have long COVID-19 symptoms. But it's no guarantee that a mild case won't also cause long COVID-19 symptoms.
Long COVID-19 exists on a spectrum, with some people experiencing symptoms for a few weeks, a month, with others still experiencing symptoms since infections first began two years ago.
However, as the severity of COVID-19 has diminished, so has the likelihood of developing long COVID-19 symptoms, said Dowdy.
In most cases, long-term symptoms do end up dissipating slowly over the passage of time. "That time course can be very long," he said.
Treatments are still being researched and developed for those suffering from long COVID-19 symptoms, but nothing substantial yet.
As BA.2 spreads across the United States with projections predicting that at least half of new cases will be BA.2, severity will likely not be a concern.
"But there are still a lot of cases, and there are still a lot of people getting sick," said Dowdy. "We're not out of the woods yet."
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