Fears are growing around the world about possible new variants. And the EU states are “strongly encouraged to introduce for all passengers departing from China to member states the requirement of a covid-19 test carried out no later than 48 hours before departure from China”. This is one of the decisions of the European Integrated Crisis Response Mechanism (IPCR), communicated by the Swedish EU Presidency.
What is frightening now, in particular the United States, is the so-called Gryphon subvariant: probably due to the new escalation of infections in China, in the US its diffusion has skyrocketed in the last month so as to be responsible for 41% of cases.
In Italy, on the other hand, the overall number of hospitalizations continues to decline, but the increase in hospitalizations among frail subjects without a fourth vaccine dose who arrive in the emergency room with severe forms of Covid and pneumonia is worrying. A global framework to be carefully monitored, experts warn, while at a national level we are preparing, even with clear changes, for the management of the new post-pandemic phase starting from the institutional bodies on the front line during the initial waves of Covid-19.
This is the case of the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) where the general manager Nicola Magrini, in application of the spoil system, will soon leave his office. A decision by the Minister of Health harshly criticized by the Pd secretary Enrico Letta, according to whom the removal of Magrini is «a serious and wrong choice of discontinuity. A partisan choice that is also a dangerous and worrying sign. On health, protection of the weakest and the fight against the pandemic – he says – there is a need not for partisan choices but for continuity ». Meanwhile, a solution is being sought for the public utility number 1500 on Covid, suspended since 1 January and which employs around 500 workers: today a first meeting was held with the unions at the Ministry of Health and the will to keep the service active.
From an epidemiological point of view, the fears are therefore linked to the risk of new variants of the SarsCoV2 virus, even if at the moment the variants detected in passengers from China who tested positive on arrival at Italian airports are all known and already present on the national territory. Including Gryphon (XBB), always belong to the family of the Omicron variant and against which the vaccines used prove effective. However, the XBB is running in a worrying way in the USA passing in the last month, says the Centers for disease control (Cdc), from 4% to 41% of infections. This subvariant, virologists and epidemiologists warn, could cause a new wave of Covid in the US. As far as Italy is concerned, the situation appears to be under control, albeit with some elements of concern. In fact, for the third week in a row, the survey by the Italian Federation of Healthcare and Hospitals (Fiaso) of 3 January highlights, the curve of Covid hospitalizations drops, with -0.7% compared to the previous survey. In this stable situation, however, there is an increase in hospitalizations “due to Covid” of 9.6%, i.e. of those patients who arrive at the hospital because they have developed respiratory failure or pneumonia following the SarsCoV2 infection. Patients hospitalized ‘due to Covid’ occupy 39% of Covid beds and in 87% of cases they are fragile people who have not received the booster dose in the last six months. “The frail population is less and less protected – explains the president of Fiaso, Giovanni Migliore – as evidenced by the high proportion of patients who have not taken the booster dose in the last six months and are arriving at the hospital due to consequences of the infection covid”. A figure, Migliore warns, that “could increase if robust preventive actions are not taken through vaccination, especially by family doctors”. Meanwhile, the positive percentage of passengers from China at Malpensa airport drops from 50% to 20%. The drop in positivity, according to the Councilor for Welfare of the Lombardy Region, Guido Bertolaso, should be attributed to the ministerial ordinance which provides for the possession of a negative swab at the time of boarding.
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