Evening News|China Biologics: The second-generation recombinant COVID-19 vaccine has shown good results on variants such as Aomi Kerong

1. 402 new cases of local confirmed cases were added in 31 provinces

From 0 to 24:00 on March 9, 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 528 new confirmed cases. Among them, 126 cases were imported from abroad, and 402 local cases, including 10 cases were converted from asymptomatic infected people to confirmed cases. There were no new deaths. There were 10 new suspected cases, all of which were imported from abroad (all in Shanghai).

2. What is antigen detection? Zhang Wenhong made it clear with a metaphor

According to the news on the website of the National Health and Health Commission on March 11, the Comprehensive Group of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council in response to the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic issued a notice, deciding to add antigen detection as a supplement on the basis of nucleic acid testing, and organized the formulation of the "Application Plan for The Detection of New Coronavirus Antigens (Trial)".

What exactly is antigen testing? What is the difference from nucleic acid testing? Why should countries supplement it with antigen testing?

Zhang Wenhong, head of the Shanghai New Crown Pneumonia Clinical Treatment Expert Group and director of the Department of Infectious Diseases of Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, pointed out in an interview with the media that antigens are like "clothes" worn outside the virus, and nucleic acid is the gene inside the virus.

These two tests are slightly different, the detection method of antigens is to measure the "clothes" from the antibody, after the comprehensive specificity, the virus can be displayed; and the nucleic acid detection is more complex and needs to be completed by amplification, because with the amplification link, the sensitivity of nucleic acid detection will be higher, but the corresponding results will take longer.

Zhang Wenhong said that in the first stage of our fight against the epidemic in China, we have achieved "clearance" through rapid combat through nucleic acid testing, but recently we have also found that after the Omilon variant came out, the overall speed of virus transmission was accelerating, not only in Shanghai, but also in other parts of the country, there were more patients in different regions, and the speed of virus transmission in a short period of time was very fast.

"At this time, we will find that if the detection speed only relies on nucleic acids, there will be certain difficulties." Zhang Wenhong said that because nucleic acids need to borrow machines, and the sampling requirements, machine amplification have a very professional set of systems, if this place is inconvenient to sample or there are no suitable conditions to do amplification, is there a simpler way?

He said that just like the home pregnancy test stick to detect whether pregnant is pregnant, antigen testing can be tested at home, and it is very fast, and it can also be detected in hospitals with poor conditions, and the cost is relatively low.

Why is this testing method so good, but in the past, everyone used nucleic acid testing? Zhang Wenhong explained that everything has its two sides, and the antigen test is slightly less sensitive because it does not amplify, but once it is positive, it will have strong value. Antigen testing has been adopted in the fight against the epidemic in Hong Kong, and the institutions involved in the fight against the epidemic have also recognized this testing method, and through the antigen test, they can directly declare whether they are infected with the new crown, and then take a series of measures.

Zhang Wenhong further said that in the future, if we want to face imported cases brought about by larger-scale international opening-up, we must always control this virus to a very low level of transmission, that is, we are compared with the virus, the earlier the case is found, the less it spreads, the faster we isolate, then we can eventually use the faster speed to achieve the "zeroing" of the social surface.

3. China Biologics: The second-generation recombinant new crown vaccine showed good results on variants such as Omiclon

On March 10, Sinopharm Zhongsheng Biotechnology Research Institute/National Engineering Research Center for Novel Vaccines (hereinafter referred to as China Institute of Biology) published a research paper online on the preprint platform medRxiv. The article published clinical trial data on the second-generation recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (NVSI-06-08) developed by the Chinese Academy of Biology for sequential enhancement, indicating that it showed good results on variants such as Omilon. The results of the study show that in people who have been vaccinated with COVID-19 inactivated vaccines, the use of a second-generation recombinant COVID-19 vaccine as a booster needle can induce higher titers and broader spectrum of new coronavirus neutralizing antibodies.

4, italy epidemic fell for 5 consecutive weeks began to rebound found a new variant of BA.3

According to the Europa News Agency, italy's Gimbe foundation (Gimbe) released the latest week's epidemic surveillance data on the 10th, showing that Italy's new crown virus infection rate rose by 1.5% from March 2 to 8, ending a five-week decline. With the number of tests down 8.8 percent, the number of new cases increased by 4,179 from the previous week. The number of coronavirus deaths was 171 per day, a decrease of 19.3% from the previous week. The number of COVID-19 patients admitted to general hospital wards decreased by 1,680 and the number of intensive care wards decreased by 116.

The results of the analysis of the Global Influenza Data Sharing Initiative (GISAID) and the virus database of the medical system by the Ceinge Institute of Biology in Italy show that the new infection cases in Italy are mainly from several sub-variants of Omicron, which can be divided into 4 different Omilon strains. In the past two months, due to the rapid spread of the original Semi-Kejung sub-variant BA.1, the infection rate of this variant has reached 53%, the infection rate of Omiquejung BA.1.1 is 36%, and the infection rate of Omiqueron BA.2 accounts for 5%.

The Institute of Microbiology in Naples, Italy, said that after the Aumechjong BA.1 and BA.2, the Aumicron BA.3 has emerged. As a new Semikerjungya variant, BA.3 is already being sequenced in Italy. At present, the number of new BA.3 infections is basically the same as that of Ami kerong BA.1.

The symptoms of infection caused by Omikejong BA.3 are not much different from those of Omikejong BA.1, mainly headaches, colds or runny noses, tiredness, fever or sore throats. In general, the incubation period of infected people is about 5 days. The covid-19 vaccine's anti-epidemic power against this variant remains, similar to Omilon BA.1. In subjects receiving the third dose of the booster, immunity to mild infection risk was 40%, and immunity to severe infection was 90%.