Experts predict that Romania may have achieved herd immunity according to a recently published paper by Anglo-American epidemiologists that the target organ for the Omicron strain to invade the human body is the upper respiratory system

Experts predict that Romania may have achieved herd immunity

According to a recent paper by British and American epidemiologists, the target organs where the Omicron strain invades the human body are the upper respiratory tract system, with little to no invasion of lung organs. A few days ago, Romanian epidemiologists pointed out that if the number of new cases in Romania does not exceed 45,000 per day and maintains the current state of 30,000, this wave of epidemic inflection point will soon come. Romanian Health Minister Alexandru Rafila predicted that all restrictions on the fifth wave of the epidemic may be lifted by the end of March, and the alert state will also be lifted.

According to a study by MedLife, Romania's largest private healthcare provider, Romania has recently seen a large number of COVID-19 cases with Delta and Omicron variants, as well as a small and stable number of cases with the latest sub-variant BA.2, and Romania is likely to have achieved herd immunity. MedLife said it would launch a new study to determine exactly how many Romanians had been infected.

MedLife also reported that after sequencing a new batch of 94 samples, all samples were identified as Omicron, the main strain of the fifth wave of the coronavirus outbreak in Romania, and in 3 samples, a SUB variant of Omicron was identified. No samples of Delta, the main strain in the fourth wave of the outbreak, were found. Within two weeks, the number of cases of new BA.2 sub-variants detected in the MedLife study group increased from 2 to 3.

Dumitru Jardan, sequencing research coordinator, biologist and MD, notes that this new sub-variant is receiving more and more attention from countries and even dominates several regions in Denmark or India, but in Romania it seems to be developing slowly, at least as observed in our research team. Therefore, if we identified 2 cases 2 weeks ago, in the group studied this week, we identified 3 cases with subvariants BA.2. The next 2 weeks will be very important, and if the speed of propagation of the new variant will remain in the same parameters, then the trajectory predicted by the authorities about the evolution of wave 5 will most likely still be valid (and may have entered the inflection point).

Luohua News Agency