The head of the preventive center of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor, Vadim Pokrovsky, on Wednesday, February 2, told Izvestia in which case the substrain of the Omicron BA.2 coronavirus variant has a chance to spread in Russia.
According to the expert, it is quite difficult to prevent the spread of new strains, but the fact that a new substrain could be brought to Russia is obvious.
“New strains can also appear in Russia, another thing is whether there will be conditions for their spread. If it is more contagious than Omicron, then it will spread quickly, but it will be hindered by the fact that, firstly, many people have been vaccinated, have been ill with Delta, Omicron, and therefore a high level of immunity has been formed, ”Pokrovsky clarified.
As the specialist explained, the strains do not crowd out one another, just one takes advantage of the distribution. At the moment, such a strain is Omicron.
“Whether the new one can spread is still unclear. He will gain an advantage if he can infect the vaccinated and recovered, ”concluded Pokrovsky.
Earlier Wednesday, the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova said that the agency carefully monitors all mutations of the coronavirus. As the specialist clarified, in total, 80,875 coronavirus genomic sequences have been loaded into the Russian national database. Of these, 8239 samples are Omicron genovariants.
Popova also pointed out the need to maintain the restrictions imposed in the regions of the Russian Federation due to the spread of the coronavirus. According to her, in the subjects where restrictive measures are in place, the epidemiological situation is stabilizing faster. The head of Rospotrebnadzor also clarified that 15,287 cases of COVID-19 were recorded in 83 regions of Russia due to the Omicron strain.
In the Russian Federation, a large-scale vaccination campaign is underway. Citizens are vaccinated for free. Six vaccines against coronavirus have been registered in the country: Sputnik V, which became the first vaccine against COVID-19 in the Russian Federation and the world, as well as Sputnik Light, Sputnik M, EpiVacCorona, EpiVacCorona-N and KoviVac .
All relevant information on the situation with coronavirus is available on the websites stopcoronavirus.rf and access to all.rf, as well as the hashtag #WeTogether. Coronavirus hotline: 8 (800) 2000-112.
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