COVID-19 has entered its third year of sweeping the world, from the early original strain to the current Omikejong mutant strain, the spread has increased, and the number of global infections has reached a new high, as of today, the number of global infections has approached 500 million, and the number of deaths has exceeded 6 million. In the past month, there have been large-scale infections in Jilin and Shanghai, as well as the lockdown of Shanghai, and there are disputes over the epidemic and the views of epidemic prevention policies. So, how serious is Omikejong? How do we respond? How should ordinary people do a good job of protection?
Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article from South Africa, where we can learn what the truth about Omikejong is like from South Africa, where Omikejong was first discovered.
The article, titled "Severity and Population Immunity of the Omikejong Strain of COVID19 in South Africa", studies the epidemiological status of the COVID19 Omikejunn strain in Hautten Province, South Africa, from October 22, 2021 to January 12, 2022, including data on morbidity, hospitalization, death and excess deaths, as well as the protective effect of vaccines, which can be used as a reference for our response to COVID19.
South Africa's Howten Province is a small but densely populated province in north-western South Africa, with an area of 18,300 square kilometers, which is only 1.5% of the total area of South Africa. The word Howten comes from the Soto language, meaning "land of gold." The discovery of gold in 1886 led to economic development, which not only led to the construction of many prestigious institutions of learning, but also became an important financial center of South Africa. Two of its cities are very important in South Africa – Johannesburg is the economic capital of South Africa and Pretoria is its administrative capital (South Africa has three capitals, the other two are Cape Town, the legislative capital (seat of parliament) and the judicial capital (seat of the Supreme Court) is Bloemfontein. ）
The above picture is from the internet
Let's first look at the data in South Africa's Howten region since the outbreak of the epidemic in March 2020, and there are four waves of outbreaks at the beginning of this year. They were the first wave of primitive strains (2020.3.7~2020.11.13), the second wave beta strains (2020.11.14~2021.30), the third wave of Delta (2021.3.31~2021.10.25), and the fourth wave of Omikron (2021.10.26~2022.1.12), with an incidence of 1498, 1178, 3301, 1464 per 100,000 people, respectively; the hospitalization rate was 215 per 100,000 people. 198, 398 and 102; mortality rates 42, 46, 92 and 7 per 100,000 population; excess mortality rates per 100,000 population 87, 77, 197 and 12. Since Omikejong is still in progress, the data in the article is only 2.5 months of statistics, so the comparison has certain limitations.
However, we can at least find that Omikejong has a significant decrease in hospitalization rate relative to the first three waves, and the mortality rate (including excess mortality) has also decreased significantly, and we can feel it more intuitively from the following graph:
While the incidence and hospitalization rate of Omikejong have decreased significantly, the decline in its mortality rate has been more obvious, indicating that the harm of Omikejong has decreased significantly compared with the previous waves. At the same time, Omiquerong also has the characteristics of coming and going fast (the waveform is narrower). It took Omikron only 1 month from discovery to peak time, while the third wave took 2 months.
Dividing the population into different age groups, let's see which age groups are more harmful to Omikerong?
In addition to the significant increase in morbidity and hospitalization rates in young children younger than 4 years of age, there was a mild increase in the 5-17 age group, the 18-44 group was flat, the age group over 45 years old decreased significantly, and the incidence of hospitalization and mortality rates in patients over the age group of 60 years old also decreased significantly. Note that because the ordinate is different for each age group, the incidence of children under 4 years of age is actually very low (16 out of 100,000) and the hospitalization rate is 3-4 per 100,000, which is much lower than in other age groups.
Omikejong is very contagious, the article sampled 7010 residents for testing, found that the positive rate of serum antibodies reached 73.1%, the positive rate of vaccinated 93.1%, and the unvaccinated also reached 68.4%. This may also explain why the number of asymptomatic infections in Shanghai is more than 20,000 per day. We can expect such figures to persist for some time.
The table above shows seropositive data for different populations
Highly contagious but less pathogenic, it is characteristic of the fourth wave of Omikron strains. There are no reports of a fifth wave of strains, will the fifth wave come? It is also unknown what will happen to the transmitting power of pathogenic forces. The article also does not provide exact data on the protective effect of the vaccine on the population, which is a little regrettable. However, there are some indirect data, indicating that the use of vaccines is still protective due to the zero vaccination rate for children younger than 12 years old, the increase in the incidence and hospitalization rate of children after infection, and the decline in adult incidence and hospitalization rate. Also, we can refer to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, which basically lasted for 2 years and then fell significantly back to the peak period, which is probably the characteristic of the epidemic of viral infections.
Figure above are two peaks during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic
Judging from this article, everyone should not panic too much in the face of this wave of Omik rong strains, and maintain calm and peace of mind. At the same time, stepping up vaccination and strengthening personal protection are still important measures for us to avoid severe illness.