The epidemic is raging around the world, and Omilon and some mutant strains are taking turns to become the mainstream mutant strains in the world. The rising number of deaths and infections has plunged the world into an atmosphere of tension.
To make matters worse now, the originally high spreading power of the Omikejong strain has now attracted a new round of mutations, according to the latest research, the rate of transmission of the mutated strain exceeds that of the original strain by 30%!
The new Omikejon variant has spread in several countries
On May 6, local time, the weekly report released from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that "the number of new cases and hospitalizations of the new crown in the United States is showing an upward trend." To make matters worse, the number of people infected with the new Aomi Kerong variant, BA.2.12.1, exploded in the United States.
In particular, in the Bay Area of California, the hardest hit area, the number of new cases has increased by more than 167% compared with last week, which means that in just one week, the epidemic has already swept through the Bay Area, so that people have to be careful when they go out.
For the people in the slums, the arrival of the virus again is undoubtedly worse, people wait in long lines for the distribution of goods, but they do not expect that the government's relief goods will be emptied after a while, and the people around them will be infected one by one, causing the entire California region to fall into panic. In response to this phenomenon, the media and relevant people in the United States have shown a pessimistic attitude.
In addition to the United States, South Korea also reported the first case of infection with the Aumikjung subtype strain BA.2.12.1 on May 3.
A South African medical expert said that the two new variants of the Omiljung variant, BA.4 and BA.5, are more contagious and have a good chance of causing the peak of a new wave of outbreaks in South Africa. In addition to the countries mentioned above, China, Spain, Australia, etc. are all caught in the blood basin of the mutant strain... The current epidemic in Shanghai is caused by the mutant BA.2.
The virus spread wildly, causing the whole world to fall into an atmosphere of panic, the source of the Aomi Kerong mutant strain, how many species of it, how powerful is it compared to the original strain?
How powerful is the new Variant of Omicron?
The source of the fear is now ba.1, BA.2, BA.2.12.1, BA.2.12.1, BA.3, BA.4, BA.5 and so on.
The variants prevalent in the United States are mainly BA.2.12.1, which is the next generation of the BA.2 variant strain. So what are the characteristics of these new variant strains?
The first is the speed of propagation.
As we all know, the spreading ability of Omikejong is very fast in many strains, but "there is a sky outside the sky", the speed of transmission of BA.2 subtype strains has been faster than that of the original Omikejong strain, and the spread of BA.2.12.1 is even higher than that of BA.2, 23%-27%.
The vice president of Lingang Fanggang Hospital said that the transmission chain of Omilon is very obscure, the aerosols exhaled by people, the circulation of air may be infected, and aerosols include weather sols and biosols, viral aerosols belong to a kind of biological aerosols, biological aerosols refer to viruses, bacteria, fungi and so on suspended in the air.
Droplets are also biological aerosols, if it is a patient exhaled aerosol, it may contain a variety of pathogens such as viruses, so when people inhale this aerosol, they may be infected with the virus carried in this aerosol. Moreover, the Aumecreon mutant plant is in plastic, and the residence time of the skin appearance has also been extended, so people should pay more attention to the Semikeron mutant strain.
Second, it also has a significant immune escape ability.
The so-called immune escape ability is the intensity of infection that can bypass the body's "immune mechanism". Unfortunately, WHO says that Omilon, a highly differentiated strain, has 26 to 32 mutations in its spike proteins, some of which are linked to proteins that escape humoral immunity.
That is to say, people who were originally infected with the BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.1 viruses have established an immune barrier that has poor effect on the newly mutated strain, is more likely to be infected, and may even escape the new crown vaccine or the humoral immunity barrier established by some other variants of the new crown virus.
In addition, the incubation period of the new mutant strain is short, the symptoms are not obvious, and it is not easy to detect. According to some foreign data, the number of days of transmission between generations has reached the shortest 2-3 days is a generation, and the symptoms are not obvious as fever, dry cough, nasal congestion, sore throat, fatigue, headache and so on.
Although the fatality rate of the Omikejong mutant strain is not high, this is all due to the active vaccination of people in the early stage, and the barrier established by the vaccine entering the body can resist the attack of some strains, thereby reducing the fatality rate.
Although the current popularity is the Olmiqueron strain, but people often ignore the Delta strain under its "umbrella", although the Delta strain is not as fast as the spread of the Olmiqueron strain, it still has a high contagiousness and mortality, then some people will wonder if it is possible for the two strains to combine with each other?
Delta Croce?
A super variant called "Delta Kerong" recently attracted a lot of attention, but it was later thought that the strain was only caused by an experimental infection.
But in fact, the World Health Organization has confirmed that there are mixed strains of Delta and Omikejong in many European countries, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark have detected the injected strains, which are caused by people infected with both the Delta strain and the Omikejong strain, and the mutation of the two strains in the body, according to the WHO, the number that can be detected is very small, and it is being tested in real time, whether it will lead to changes in the severity of the disease, and it needs to wait for further investigation results.
It is conceivable that if the Deltakjong virus begins to mutate more when there are more infected people, and the speed of transmission and immune escape are explosively improved, then the immunity of people against this super virus may be as fragile as "eggs touching stones". Because there are many mutated viruses that appear in people's field of vision, it has also triggered people's deep thinking about virus mutations.
Is there an end to the virus mutation?
Now all kinds of mutated viruses are terrorizing people, but why do viruses continue to mutate? In fact, this problem is not only the new crown virus, all organisms that rely on DNA and RNA as genetic material are mutating all the time, and RNA viruses are more likely to mutate, and the new crown virus is an RNA virus.
Its single-chain structure stability is very poor, so it may be wrong at any time when copying, and the so-called "mutation" will occur.
Viruses mutate frequently because their reproductive cycles are short, a replication cycle takes about 7 hours, and if the process goes well, the numbers that can be reached in a day are in the millions.
The process is random, and it is possible to mutate traits that are more conducive to the survival of the virus, or it may become weaker. But weakened viruses will soon be eliminated, and survival-friendly mutations will allow viruses to survive and begin to multiply, passing on this generation of dominant variants from generation to generation.
That's why the spread of COVID-19 is now stronger from generation to generation. Unfortunately, there is no end to the mutation, and all humans can do is to develop a specific drug or vaccine as soon as possible before the next mutation to kill the virus in the cradle.
As the mutated strains continue to replicate, people's fears are also deepening, so are the mainland's current epidemic prevention measures still effective?
Are the mainland's epidemic prevention methods still useful?
With the epidemic of the new crown virus variant strain, the society has aroused great concern, and the National Health Commission said that the mainland prevention and control strategy is still effective for the Omikejong variant.
The Health Commission pointed out that the Aumechjong variant spread rapidly in other countries, so the mainland began to restrict the entry of tourists from abroad. It is comforting to note that the Omikejong variant does not affect the sensitivity and specificity of the existing nucleic acid detection reagents on the mainland, and the mainland's general strategy of "external prevention of import, internal prevention of rebound" has played a key role in the overall command of epidemic prevention.
"External defense" emphasizes the observation of inbound personnel, the monitoring of overseas cold chain or cargo transportation, and "internal defense" means to strengthen the control of the flow of people in epidemic areas, nucleic acid testing of suspected new crown infected persons, self-testing of people at home and other measures.
The general policy of "dynamic zeroing", that is, to take comprehensive prevention and control to quickly extinguish the epidemic, the summary and refinement of these experiences are still valid for the Aumechjong mutation. It can be seen from this that the mainland's current epidemic prevention measures also play a great role in the Aomi Kerong mutant strain.
For us, conventional protection methods are also effective against the Ami kerong mutant strain. Frequent hand washing, more ventilation, wearing masks, less gathering, and maintaining social distancing are still what we should do, and timely disinfection and cleaning work are also top priorities, as long as we do a good job of protection, the mutated virus can no longer endanger our lives.