Recently, the new crown epidemic in my country has shown a trend of multiple scattered areas and locally gathered, with new cases spreading across 29 provinces across the country!
Recalling the epidemic statistics since September, we can see that after the end of October, the number of new confirmed cases + asymptomatic infections in the country has been increasing every day, and the new crown epidemic broke out again after the wave of the epidemic in 2020. In addition to Wuhan, the epidemic situation in Zhengzhou, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Inner Mongolia and other places in Henan Province is also serious!
One of the important reasons for the sudden rise of this round of national epidemic is the continuous mutation of Omickron . According to , Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the sequence of the virus genes prevalent in Wuhan shows that it belongs to the evolutionary branch of the Omickron variant BA.5.2. How terrible is this strain? How serious is this round of epidemic? Let’s analyze it below.
Why does the evolutionary branch of Omickron BA.5.2 spread so quickly?
According to Yang Xiaobing, director of the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Institute of Wuhan Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the evolutionary branch of the BA.5.2 variant strain that is currently prevalent in Wuhan has the following characteristics:
1. High viral load
viral load determines the strength of the virus's transmission ability. According to experts, the basic regeneration number of the BA.5.2 variant strain is 18.6, which means that the average person in this strain can infect 18 people, which is very rare among the previous strains. Moreover, even if the virus nucleic acid test is positive if it is diagnosed or asymptomatically infected, its CT value is low, which means that the patient will take longer to fully recover and is not contagious.
2. The latency and generation interval are short
The average time for infected people to be infected to be transmitted to others is only 2 days, and the shortest takes only 24 hours. Therefore, this has also added a lot of difficulty to epidemic prevention and control. Many infected people may have already transmitted to others before they find that their nucleic acid test results are positive. It is also because of this characteristic that the strain poses a risk of hidden sexual transmission between families and communities.
How serious is this round of national epidemic?
As of October 29, 31 provinces and the Xinjiang Corps nationwide had 401 new confirmed cases, and 1,704 new asymptomatic infections, which is also the peak since October. Currently, there are 2,518 high-risk areas, 1,771 medium-risk areas, and 317 low-risk areas in the country.
Although the epidemic caused by Omickron in various places has not yet reached the point where the city needs to be locked down, due to its wide range and rapid spread, the severity of the epidemic caused is actually no less than the epidemic that occurred in Wuhan the previous year. Based on this trend and combined with the characteristics of Omickron BA.5.2, it is estimated that this round of epidemic will not be completely calmed in a short period of time, so we need to be prepared to fight this strain for a long time.
new crown vaccine is mentioned again
Under the current epidemic situation, the new crown vaccine is mentioned by many people again. Practice has proved that vaccination with the new crown vaccine does play a certain protective role and can reduce the infection mortality rate. It has been more than half a year since the third intensification injection started, and Omickron continued to mutate during this period, so when do people care about the fourth injection? Some domestic experts pointed out that from the current observation results, my country's third-pillar reinforcement needle still has sufficient protective effect, so the current top priority is to ensure that all citizens, especially those with underlying diseases, complete the third-pillar reinforcement needle. As for when the fourth shot will be vaccinated, it depends on the unified deployment of the country.
The struggle against the new coronavirus is a difficult and protracted war. We need to continuously consolidate the difficult prevention and control results, and at the same time we must pay attention to personal protection and have confidence and patience in the current epidemic prevention and control policies. We believe that as long as we persist, victory will eventually belong to us!
