It seems that after a year of fighting with human beings, the cunning coronavirus has come up with many new topics for human beings to answer…
Recently, South Africa ushered in the second wave of the peak of COVID-19 transmission, especially the graduation season, Christmas and New Year holiday, which increased the risk of virus transmission, thus making South Africa’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 exceed the 900,000 mark.
Meanwhile, there is even more disturbing news coming – South Africa’s health minister Mukez revealed at a regular press conference on December 18 that the KwaZulu-Natal research innovation and sequencing platform has discovered a variant of the novel coronavirus after sequencing hundreds of virus samples. Mukez said that there is currently evidence that the variant drove the second wave of the epidemic in South Africa.
Karim, a leading South African epidemiological and infectious disease expert, said that the COVID-19 variant appeared a few weeks ago and that the variant spreads very fast in South Africa.
Like variants that have been found in the UK, Australia and other countries. Karim stressed that it is too early to judge whether the variant is more serious than the first wave of the virus and whether it is reinfecting the first wave of infected people, and it will take time to verify whether the current vaccine can fight the new variant.
South African medical experts also pointed out that the mutant COVID-19 virus has appeared and is “severely illing young and healthy people”.
Mukez admitted that the transmission speed and infectivity of newly discovered mutant viruses have increased significantly, especially young people who were previously “not vulnerable to infection” who were more vulnerable to COVID-19 than before.
Up to now, South African medical experts have not identified the source of the mutant virus, but from this perspective of the outbreak, the mutant virus was first discovered in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa, and then spread along the “garden Avenue”. At present, it has been found in Gauteng, Western Cape and other areas.
18 December, WHO held a routine COVID-19 press conference. Maria van Kohoff, technical director of the WHO Health Emergency Project, said that South African researchers have noticed some COVID-19 variants.
The COVID-19 virus will change over time, and these variations are predictable. The working group has worked with South African researchers to see whether these mutations will affect the severity of the virus, whether it will be more easily transmitted, and their impact on diagnosis, treatment and vaccines. At present, there is no sign of a change in the behavior of the virus.
Will the mutation of COVID-19 affect the effectiveness of the vaccine?
Will the global emergence of COVID-19 mutation affect the effectiveness of vaccines? This is an issue of great public concern.
In response, Wang Huaqing, chief expert and chief physician of immunization planning of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on December 19 that the mutation of the virus may be a very important issue of concern for the research and development of vaccines and disease prevention and control. In fact, as a very simple creature, the mutation of viruses is a normal phenomenon. Generally speaking, this mutation will not affect the severity of the disease, the infectivity of the disease, nor will it affect the immune effect of the vaccine against the virus.
“After the virus is isolated, some research institutions or prevention and control institutions will sequence the virus. At present, hundreds of thousands of gene sequencing are shared around the world. By comparing more than 100,000 of the viruses with higher sequence quality detected, no major mutations have been found, and the variations that occur are also normal.
Inside. In addition, the relevant units of our country have also used antibodies produced by the vaccine developed in the early stage to neutralize the strains of different sources, including foreign countries. Through the test, its immune effect is still relatively good, and there has been no change. Wang Huaqing said.
Of course, whether there will be a major mutation in the later stage of COVID-19, whether from the World Health Organization, relevant institutions in various countries, or vaccine enterprises, there will continue to pay attention to and carry out research.
Some data obtained from these studies will be analyzed for the variability, and also include vaccines for the follow-up. Research on the use strategy to provide relevant evidence for vaccine use. So overall, the mutation of COVID-19 now does not see the impact on the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Environmental transmission of COVID-19
“[COVID-19] was originally human-to-human transmission, but now a new topic has emerged, environmental transmission from person to person.
December 19, Zhong Nanshan, winner of the Order of the Republic and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the environmental spread of the novel coronavirus is an emerging topic, requiring scientists to find laws and study preventive measures.
Previously, environmental samples were reported positive at epidemic press conferences in many places in China.
On December 14, the Chaoyang District Center for Disease Control and Prevention received a positive nucleic acid test. Sampled the hotel in the living environment and collected a total of 30 samples of elevators, corridors and lighting environment. Except for 4 positive samples of the hospital environment in the hospital, all of them were negative.
On the 18th, the Beijing epidemic press conference announced that a new case was associated with the above-mentioned confirmed case, and the patient’s place of residence was located in Dashanzi Store, Hanting Hotel, Chaoyang District, where the confirmed case lived on December 14. Of the 109 environmental samples sampled for Hanting Hotel, staff dormitory and workplace, 21 were positive and the remaining 88 were negative.
In addition to Beijing, on December 7, there was a new confirmed case of COVID-19 in Chengdu’s Didu District. In the environmental and food sampling and testing, Chengdu city has sampled a total of 11,737, and 11,678 have been tested, of which 15 are positive.
The positive samples are from items, homes and surrounding environments used by the case. ‘Tested, including the refrigerator, doorknobs, etc. in the home of the case.
Earlier, on November 20, positive nucleic acid samples appeared on the environmental surface of the kindergarten where the confirmed case Yang’s granddaughter in Tianjin. Yang will pick up his granddaughter to and from kindergarten every day.
Zhong Nanshan pointed out that the prevention and control of the epidemic in China faces two major risks, one is imported from abroad, and the other is the transmission of the novel coronavirus through the environment.” Can viruses packaged on the outside of the cold chain infect people? How high will the virus concentration cause infection? How many days can the virus survive? These new problems require us to find out the rules and study preventive measures.
It seems that after a year of fighting with human beings, the cunning coronavirus has come up with many new topics for human beings to answer…
