[이데일리 장영은 기자] “If you don’t have any infected friends around you right now, you don’t have any friends at all.”
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) introduced the words of Mexican infectious disease expert Brenda Krabtree on the 5th (local time) while explaining the spread of the COVID-19 omicron mutation, which is spreading at a frightening speed around the world.
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According to health authorities around the world, it is estimated that 1 in 6 people in the UK, 1 in 5 in Denmark, and 1 in 9 in Israel have contracted COVID-19 since the end of November last year, when the Omicron mutation was discovered, the WSJ reported. . In the United States, one in five people had been infected with COVID-19 by mid-January, when Omicron mutation peaked. In Korea, despite the weekend, as of 00:00 on the 6th, the number of confirmed cases reached 38,691, approaching 40,000, breaking another record.
William Schaffner, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, said the increase in the number of patients due to omicron mutations is the first in nearly 100 years. “In terms of the percentage of global infections in the short term, the only thing that can compare to the scale and speed of Omicron’s spread is the 1918-1919 flu pandemic,” he said.
“It’s an incredibly unique moment when so many people are infected with a pathogen at the same time,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Analysis (IHME) at the University of Washington Medical School.
Trevor Bedford, a virologist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center, said the surge in cases caused by the spread of the omicron mutation might continue through mid-February. “It’s surprising that up to 40 percent of the population might be infected with the same pathogen in eight weeks,” Bedford said. The general infection rate during flu season is regarding 10% for 16 weeks.
It is pointed out that the record number of infected people can be a serious problem even if the fatality rate of Omicron mutation is low as confirmed by research results so far.
IHME Director Murray said, “Even if only 5% of those infected are sick, that’s still a large number.”
The flu is also prevalent in winter, and it is estimated that 2 million people have had flu symptoms since October last year. In Brazil, where the flu is also prevalent, last week a fifth of Rio de Janeiro’s medical staff took sick leave, the WSJ added.
Unprecedented number of job vacancies are occurring in areas such as hospitals, airlines, schools and sports events where remote work is not possible.
On the other hand, according to the statistics of the international statistical site ‘Our World in Data’, more than 84 million people around the world were diagnosed with Corona 19 in January. This is almost equal to the number of annual confirmed cases in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
