On February 21, local time, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that he would lift all COVID-19 quarantine measures in England on February 24.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that from February 24, the English region will remove the legal requirement for people to self-isolate after testing positive for the new crown virus. In addition, from 1 April, free COVID-19 testing in England will end in addition to the oldest age group and the most vulnerable.
The world is gradually opening up, what do we do?
Wu Zunyou, chief expert of epidemiology of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, delivered a video keynote speech at the forum "The New Crown Is Gone, What is a Big Country" on February 15, saying that the world is now experiencing the fourth wave of the new crown epidemic, and the fourth wave is far higher than the previous three waves of peaks, which is mainly due to the rapid spread of Omicron, and when Omicron attacked, European and American countries took a more relaxed approach and did not take strong control measures, which not only caused a rapid rise in the epidemic in their own countries. It has also caused a spread to the world.
Wu Zunyou, chief expert in epidemiology at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that some countries in Europe and some countries in the Americas have successively announced that they will cancel comprehensive epidemic prevention measures. The normalized prevention and control strategy and dynamic zero strategy we have carried out have made us win-win in the past two years: first, we are winners in epidemic prevention and control; second, we are also winners in economic development. Economic development, especially in 2021, our economy is mainly dependent on exports to support GDP growth. The reason why exports can be supported is because various countries are blockaded and economic development is difficult. Now that most countries in Europe and the United States will be fully liberalized, it will be more convenient for them to have economic exchanges and do business.
We are now faced with two choices, whether to continue to normalize the prevention and control strategy, or to further improve the existing prevention and control measures. If we continue to insist, we now have some private enterprises and self-employed people who will face tremendous pressure, including the pressure of survival, and these ordinary people can persist for one or two years. On the other hand, after the countries of Europe and the Americas have comprehensively relaxed their prevention and control measures, they have brought us a lot of pressure. If we also "lie flat" like European and American countries without any treatment, the burden we will bear is still very heavy, because the initial prediction is that many people will be infected and many people will die. Such a calculation is unacceptable to the people, society and officials.
So, there are now multiple teams working on how to further improve existing prevention and control measures. The perfect prevention and control measures are neither the simple normalization of prevention and control dynamic zeroing that we have now, nor the simple "lying flat", but also the value orientation that can ensure that our epidemic is controlled and realize the value orientation of people first and life first. At the same time, we can ensure normal international exchanges and economic development.
Wu Zunyou: We should still be cautiously optimistic about the termination of the new crown epidemic
Wu Zunyou, chief expert in epidemiology at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "From two perspectives, we still have to be cautiously optimistic about the termination of the new crown epidemic, we can't be optimistic, but we can't be too optimistic, we still have to be cautious. ”
From the perspective of virus mutation, in the past two years, the virus has undergone several major mutations, and these large mutations mainly have a great impact on its spread and pathogenicity. Among these virus strains, Delta strains have been circulating for the longest time, have the widest distribution range, and involve the largest number of people. The second is Omicron, which spreads the fastest, spreading all over the world in a month or two, and the number of infected people is also the largest in the world. If you analyze these major mutant strains, an important mutant strain will appear on average every 4-8 months. Based on such a variant, we believe that a new variant strain may emerge between April and August 2022, and this new variant strain will become the new mainstream epidemic strain. This is an immature prediction based on the first 5 viral mutations.
Now, the new crown virus mutation is the mutation of the virus that we have no way to control at present, Omicron is not the last, there will be new variants, and it will also cause new epidemics. So, for ending the COVID-19 epidemic in 2022, it is not particularly optimistic. Of course, I believe that its impact on us humans is certainly not as great as in 2020 and 2021. It's about explaining future outbreak trends from the perspective of viral mutations.
Editor-in-charge: Lu Yang
