The Paper's reporter He Liping
On May 13, local time, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a weekly report: "The first death of the new crown was recorded in the United States in the week of January 11, 2020, and more than two years later, the United States is approaching a tragic milestone: 1 million people died of the new crown." However, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the flag to be lowered to half-mast for five days on May 12, announcing that the death toll of COVID-19 in the United States had reached 1 million. According to the latest data from the CDC, the number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States as of that day was 996,653. According to cdc's previously released "Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report (MMWR)," COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death in the United States for the second consecutive year, after heart disease and cancer. From the data, more than 1 in every 8 deaths in the United States in 2021 is caused by COVID-19, up from about 1 in 10 deaths in 2020.
CdC said in its weekly report that in addition to illness and death, the new crown has triggered educational disruptions, unemployment, separation from friends and family, a food crisis, a financial burden and an unprecedented mental health crisis in the United States. By October 2021, more than 140,000 children in the United States have lost their parents or guardians. Today, driven by the Opmiqueron wave, that number has risen to more than 241,000 in less than half a year.
The CDC said the pandemic has had a profound impact on everyone, but some are more vulnerable to the outbreak. The facts of the past two years show that health equity in the United States remains unfulfilled. Many racial and minority groups, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people living in rural areas in the United States have been disproportionately affected by the outbreak and are more likely to become seriously ill or even die in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the United States has experienced an unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic in the past winter, COVID-19 cases in the United States are soaring with the liberalization of epidemic prevention measures and the impact of the new mutant strain BA.2.12.1 of Aumicroon. According to the CDC's weekly report, the number of new daily cases in the United States increased by 30.7% from a week ago, the nucleic acid positive detection rate increased by 28.16%, and the number of new daily admissions rose by 17.5%.
Specifically, as of May 11, 2022, the current 7-day moving average of new cases per day is 84,778, compared with a daily increase of 64,781 cases in the previous 7 days, and as of May 4, 2022, a total of 82196077 COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States. The positive nucleic acid detection rate was 9.1%, compared with 7.4% a week ago. The 7-day moving average of new hospital admissions per day is 2629, up from 2219 a week ago.
According to the CDC, some early evidence in the United States suggests that BA.2.12.1 has stronger immune escape ability and faster transmission rate than BA.1/BA.2. Omi kerong is considered to be the most contagious strain of the NEW CROWN mutation to date, and BA.2.12.1 is the next generation of the BA.2 variant strain. BA.2 has at least 30% higher transmission than BA.1. According to CNN, the spread of BA.2.12.1 is estimated to be 23% to 27% higher than its predecessor BA.2.
According to the latest surveillance data from the CDC of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the BA.2.12.1 variant has accounted for nearly 70% of the proportion in New York and New Jersey. In the United States, the BA.2.12.1 variant has also accounted for 42.6%, which is a 16.7% increase from 36.5% a week ago. There is currently no evidence that BA.2.12.1 causes more severe symptoms than the various sub-variants of the original Omikejun strain.
Previously, it was widely believed that the virulence of Themi kerong was weak, but recent studies from two teams from the University of Hong Kong and Harvard University have shown that in the case of unvaccinated, the infection with the Olmikron strain faces a similar risk of death to the original strain of infection with the early new crown.
Scientists use genome sequencing techniques to identify the COVID-19 variant strain. By analyzing the similarities and differences between these sequences, scientists can track the prevalence of the mutated strain and monitor changes in the genetic code of the new coronavirus variant strain. This information can give people a better understanding of how variation affects public health. Genes in the coronavirus genome contain instructions for building the virus. For example, the brown part of the image above has genetic instructions for building spike proteins, which are the "keys" for the new coronavirus to enter human cells. Mutations in the spike protein may affect viral transmission and immune escape. Therefore, scientists pay close attention to mutations in the part of the new coronavirus spike protein. BA.2.12.1 has attracted much attention because of the mutation at the L452Q point on its spike protein. L452 is the key mutation point of the Delta variant strain, which gives Delta a transmissibility advantage and immune escape advantage, which is not available to the original Omiljun strain.
At present, there are 2 InternationalLystrom variant strains that have attracted much attention: BA.4 and BA.5. The latest data released by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases of South Africa shows that the positive detection rate of the new crown virus in South Africa is 31.1%, close to the highest record in the country. The L452 point on the spike proteins of BA.4 and BA.5 also mutated, meaning stronger immune escape. Affected by BA.4 and BA.5, South Africa may have entered the fifth wave of the epidemic.
According to current preliminary studies, BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 have a spread advantage of more than 25% over BA.2. At the same time, stronger immune escape capabilities mean that there will be more breakthrough infections.
The latest research by Xie Xiaoliang's team at Peking University shows that BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 have the strongest evasive humoral immunity. Of particular note is that BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 showed stronger neutralization and evasion of serum from subjects who received three doses of the vaccine and were infected with Omikejong BA.1 compared to BA.2.
The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has also caused a sharp drop in life expectancy in the United States. Life expectancy for the entire population in the U.S. was 78.86 years in 2019, fell to 76.99 years in 2020, and fell to 76.6 years in 2021. This is a rare decline in U.S. history. In other words, the new crown was popular in the United States for 2 years, which reduced life expectancy in the United States by 2.26 years. Available data show that the largest overall decline in life expectancy in the United States occurred in 1943 (a 2.9-year decline), when the number of deaths in the United States peaked in World War II.
The CDC states that if COVID-19 is the cause of death on the death certificate, it will be counted as a death due to COVID-19. If COVID-19 is not the cause or contributing to the death, it is not reported on the death certificate.
Although only 1 million people have died of the new crown, the United States has recently set off a wave of not wearing masks, and even hated those who wear masks, which has contributed to the epidemic.
Editor-in-Charge: Li Yuequn