The source of the epidemic in many places has been found! Subversion of cognition: new super mutants invade and spread domestically

Recently, the epidemic situation in many places in China has been one after another.

At the beginning of June, the epidemic that lasted for several months in Shanghai finally came to an end, but at the end of June, an outbreak broke out in Si County, Suzhou, Anhui. 3 consecutive days of decline.

But at this moment, bad news came from Shanghai! Since Shanghai entered July, the KTV epidemic broke out, the airport epidemic occurred, and many quarantine hotels tested positive after they were released from isolation, and the infected people continued to spill over to many provinces. Shanghai has now identified people infected with the super mutant BA.5 of Omicron. , there were rumors that Shanghai will be closed on a large scale next Tuesday. Although the rumors have now been refuted, it can be said that the alarm of epidemic prevention and control in Shanghai has been sounded again!

But at the same time, there are sporadic cases in many parts of the country, including new outbreaks in Xi'an, Wuhan, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. It is especially worthy of vigilance that the source of the epidemic in these cities is also the latest Omic. A new branch of Rong mutant strain BA.5!

Subversion of cognition: Omicron variant BA.5 may regain lung infection and has strong immune escape ability

Based on reports from all parties, in addition to the characteristics of faster transmission and higher viral load, the Omikron mutant BA.5 is a new branch of Omikron mutant BA.5 compared to the previous mutants of Omikron. There is a new situation that invades the lungs and has a strong immune escape ability!

The Omicron variant BA.5 that flowed out of Africa appeared in the Xi'an epidemic infection. It took less than half a year for the virus to become popular in the world. At present, there is still an intensifying trend. Most of the patients are not sick after infection However, compared with the previously popular BA2.2, BA.5 seems to have recovered the characteristics of the first-generation COVID-19 virus, that is, the possibility of infecting the lungs and causing severe illness is increasing, which may mean that more severe patients appear. !

What does the emergence of the new branch BA.5 of the new super mutant Omicron mean?

The transmission ability of the new virus strain is super strong. Take the 07.09 Hainan-Guangdong elderly self-driving tour group epidemic as an example: There is a large family of retired elderly people in Guangzhou (three sisters + two husbands, 2 couples + another aunt) on June 20. I left Guangzhou by car on the day, and its route is: Hezhou in Guangxi - Zhanjiang in Guangdong - Haikou in Hainan - Zhanjiang - Maoming - Guangzhou, and returned to Guangzhou on the evening of July 5th.

July 8: 5 people in this line were tested positive, plus 1 case of close contact was detected in Guangzhou; Maoming reported 1 case.

July 9: 7 cases were reported in Haikou, Hainan, 1 in Zhanjiang, 11 in Maoming, 4 in Jiangmen, 2 in Guangzhou, 2 in Foshan, and 1 in Yangjiang.

Here comes the question: The elderly tour group didn't stop in Jiangmen, Foshan, and Yangjiang. How come there are also infected people in these three cities?

The reason is the service area. When the five returned, they got off at the Kaiping Chikan service in Jiangmen at around 17:30 on July 5 and went to the bathroom. They stayed for just 9 minutes, but the virus left behind. So people from Jiangmen, Foshan and Yangjiang were infected here and brought home! A local notification was issued today that the service area has been closed!

The COVID-19 virus is a positive-strand RNA virus with a high probability of natural mutation. Most of the mutations will cause the virus to die, and a small amount of mutations will allow the virus to survive. The same as the SARS virus, why does the COVID-19 virus keep mutating? The reason may be that the larger the population of the virus (the larger the number of infected people) and the longer a single infection lasts (be wary of long-term infection in immunocompromised patients), the greater the probability of the virus mutating.

As the virus population becomes larger and larger, coupled with the application of some "special drugs" that promote mutation, the virus genome is becoming more and more abundant. The new strain must have the ability to "immune breakthrough" and can deal with the antibodies produced by infection and vaccines, so it is necessary to re-develop drugs and vaccines at a certain stage. Now the virus strain is replaced every 3 months or so, but it is difficult to continue to shorten the development cycle of vaccines and drugs, so the challenges encountered by vaccine and drug strategies will become greater and greater.

Epilogue

Fortunately, despite the aggressiveness of the new virus strain, our non-drug intervention measures such as frequent hand washing, wearing masks, maintaining social distancing, nucleic acid screening, epidemiological investigation, and isolation will not be significantly affected by the virus mutation, and it is still our response. The magic weapon of the current epidemic.