And the newspaper “The Independent” quoted Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden, during a briefing at the White House, yesterday, Tuesday, that the new sub-mutant is able to spread quickly and that it has caused regarding 60 percent of injuries in the United States.
“Each successive mutator has the advantage of faster transmission than the previous one,” Fauci added, adding, “If you were someone who contracted the virus during the first or even the second waves, you wouldn’t have a lot of good protection under the current wave.”
Fauci’s comments coincide with warnings to health experts from around the world of new strains caused by the Omicron mutant, which is more like a “hidden strain” capable of re-infecting people with the Corona virus within weeks of their last infection with the same disease.
“What we’re seeing is an increasing number of people who have had BA.2 and then been infected once more four weeks later,” Western Australia’s chief health officer, Andrew Robertston, said in a press statement.
Fauci, who pointed out that the new strains will continue to pose a threat to society as long as the virus continues to spread unchecked, adding: “But we should not let it disrupt our lives, and at the same time we do not deny the fact that we must deal with it.”
Faucia, who also heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said one reason the new strains of Omicron have spread is due to their ability to evade “antibodies and the inability of current vaccines to counteract them.”
Rochelle Wallinsky, of the Center for Infectious Diseases Control, explained during the briefing at the White House that “it is possible that people with previous infections, even with BA.1 or BA.2, are still at risk for BA.4 or BA.5”.
In the same context, researcher and physician Dan Baruch found, through research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that there was a threefold decrease in neutralizing antibodies from vaccines and infection once morest BA.4 and BA.5, which were significantly lower than BA. 1 and BA.2.
“It is likely that vaccine immunity will continue to provide significant protection once morest severe symptoms caused by the BA.4 and BA.5 mutant,” Baruch told CNN.
Cases across the United States continued to hover around 100,000 per day, but most health experts agree that this number does not accurately reflect the number of infections, as many rely on conducting tests at home, while the number of hospital admissions increased, According to the New York Times, it has increased by 18 percent over the past two weeks in the United States.
For her part, the epidemiologist of infectious diseases at the World Health Organization, Maria Van Kerkhove, stated that the goal is not to prevent all cases of transmission but to work to reduce its spread,” adding: “It is not over, and we are playing with fire by allowing this virus to spread in such a way.” extreme levels.”
In a related context, the epidemiologist at the Health Security Agency in the United Kingdom, Megan Cale, confirms that new strains are spreading widely among people who have not been infected with the virus before, pointing out that regarding half of those infected in England in the current wave suffer from the disease for the first time.
He noted that those infected with the new sub-mutant represent only 15 percent of the country’s population, adding: “Although repeated infection poses a serious problem, the population still enjoys some protection once morest infection with some new sub-strains.”
According to Cal, the effect of the BA.5 mutate will make a significant difference around the world, explaining that both South Africa and the United Kingdom have seen only slight increases in hospitalizations and deaths despite the rise in BA.5 cases, which indicates that “protection from vaccines Against severe disease and death is still really strong.”
But Portugal is very fortunate, as deaths have risen to levels approaching those in the first spread of the Omicron mutant, and the words of Cal, who made it clear that such differences should be expected between societies and countries due to several factors, including the extent of the previous infection, the rate of infection and the types of vaccines they obtained And the nature of the strains in which they spread.
