The Omicron variant could make the virus endemic to the UK. Fewer deaths in Spain, Sanchez: it’s time for new parameters to manage the pandemic
The situation in Germany is improving, where there are 25,255 new cases of coronavirus and 52 deaths in the last 24 hours. However, the weekly incidence of confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants rises to 375.7 from 362.7. According to the Robert Koch Institute, more than 7.5 million people in Germany have contracted Covid-19 and 114,029 deaths have been recorded since the beginning of the pandemic. Infections are also decreasing in Great Britain. Data from the health authorities yesterday reported 146,390 against 178,250 the day before. On the other hand, the number of deaths increased, equal to 313 from the previous 229. There were a total of 1,227,000 positives in the country in the last week, 10.6% more than the previous week. The Omicron variant could make Covid endemic to the UK, to the point where it could become like a common cold. This was stated by government adviser Mike Tildesley, of the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modeling group. “What could happen in the future – he said – for the emergence of a new less serious variant thanks to which, in the long term, Covid would become something similar to the common cold we have lived with so far”. According to the expert, in Great Britain there is a sharp slowdown in cases, also confirmed by a decongestion of hospitals and intensive care.
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But in other countries, Omicron is not stopping its run for now. To the sound of daily records, driven by the high contagiousness of the variant, the world is facing an avalanche of positives – more than 2 million per day on average in the first week of the year. But if cases fly, deaths seem to slow down, with an average of 6,237 daily victims since the beginning of the year, to a 15-month low, fueling hopes that the new strain will be less lethal, especially among vaccinated people. In New York, yesterday there were over 90,000 new positives – the highest since the start of the pandemic – and 154 deaths recorded. In some neighborhoods, the positivity rate is as high as 35%, nearly five times the levels of last winter, with peaks close to 50% in the Bronx. A situation that is inevitably putting the hospital system in a growing emergency, close to 12 thousand hospitalizations. At the moment, however, no closures or restrictions are planned for citizens.
The infections also fly to Mexico – the fifth most affected country in the world for the number of victims behind the United States, Brazil, India and Russia – and Peru, where new records are recorded, with more than 30 thousand and 16 thousand cases respectively in one day. In Africa, 10 million cases have been exceeded, according to data from the African Union health department, which also counts over 231 thousand victims. Among the states most affected is South Africa, where Omicron was discovered at the end of November.
New absolute peaks also in the Philippines (28,707 new infected), where President Rodrigo Duterte had threatened arrest for no vaxes who do not respect the lockdown. The variant is also rampant in the Middle East, with records in Kuwait and Qatar, where some restrictions have been reintroduced, and cases tripled in a week in Saudi Arabia. And while monitoring the evolution of the virus continues, with the magnifying glass on new possible strains of interest such as Deltacron, the combination of Delta and Omicron identified in Cyprus, the push for boosters does not stop. From 1 February, in Greece anyone who has not received the third dose 7 months after the second will be considered by the authorities as not vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, warned that it could be time to monitor the pandemic in a different way, due to the evident drop in the number of deaths, confirming news released by El Pais, according to which the government is thinking about methods alternative monitoring. “We have the conditions to open, gradually and with caution, the debate at a technical and European level, to begin evaluating the evolution of this disease with different parameters from those we have up to now,” said Sanchez in an interview with the station. radio Cadena Ser. According to reports from the Pais, the next step of the Spanish government will be to start treating Covid in a way more similar to the approach to a common flu: without counting every case of contagion, without testing in front of the appearance of a slightest symptom. In short, treat it like another respiratory disease. The Spanish health authorities have been working on this transition for months.
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