According to the latest news from the Russian Satellite News Agency on March 20, the WHO representative in Russia Melita Vuinovic told the media that it will be difficult for the world to overcome the epidemic before the end of this year, and the outside world should not speculate about the cancellation. The possibility of an international public health event emergency.
Vuinovic said: "Whether the decision to cancel PHEIC (Public Health Emergency of International Concern) depends on the situation of the epidemic, unfortunately, we have all seen the data, so don't make any guesses now." Vuinovic pointed out. , "Cancelling" the pandemic is not the most important thing, it is important to defeat the virus that has killed millions of people around the world. "Although it is unlikely to achieve a full victory before the end of this year, we can at least reduce the hospitalization rate, infection rate and death rate." Vuinovic also emphasized that the current worldwide vaccination work is producing positive results, but vaccines The rate of vaccination needs to be further accelerated to ensure that all countries can afford the vaccine.
There is a view that the WHO is worried about a situation where a large number of infected people will become the "petri dishes" of the virus, and the virus will mutate faster and faster, which may eventually cause the vaccine to lose its effect. In fact, this phenomenon has already appeared in South Africa. Because the AstraZeneca vaccine has limited immunity against the "501.V2" variant new coronavirus found locally, the South African government had to announce the suspension of the vaccine in late February. Of course, there are technical problems with the AstraZeneca vaccine itself, but one of the important reasons is that the mutated vaccine is more infectious. According to the results of a study published in January by the African Institute of Health, the "501.V2" mutant strain is 20% to 200% more infectious than the original new coronavirus, and it is very deceptive to the antibodies in the recovered patients. , They have recorded multiple cases of repeated infections.
On March 16, local time, the French General Administration of Health announced a more serious news: A new variant of the new coronavirus has been discovered in the province of Côtes-d`Armor in the Brittany region of the country, which seems to have characteristics that cannot be detected by nucleic acid testing. . French media reported that a cluster of infections broke out in a Brittany company on February 22. 79 confirmed patients were sent to the hospital for treatment. Three weeks later, the Rani Yon hospital that received them found out from 8 of the patients. A new mutated new coronavirus has been introduced. The reason why the hospital noticed the abnormality was that although the 8 patients had shown obvious symptoms of new coronary pneumonia, the nucleic acid test results of their nasopharyngeal samples were negative. After the sample was sent to Pasteur Research for further genetic testing, the researchers found a new mutant new coronavirus in the sample. The mutant strain's S protein (spike protein) and other regions carried a total of 9 mutations.
French infectious disease scientist Pascal Crepe analyzed that there are two possibilities that cause the virus to be undetectable: one is that there is no virus in the upper respiratory tract, and the virus has migrated to the lungs in a short time, which means its Not highly contagious. The other is that the degree of mutation of the virus has exceeded the threshold, so that the nucleic acid detection fails. The latter situation is disturbing, because it will destroy the entire epidemiological investigation strategy. If the new mutant virus can really ignore nucleic acid testing, then it is likely to have spread to other areas without people knowing anything about it. .