Features of the Hong Kong flu that came to Russia are named
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Horror stories began to spread in the media: the Hong Kong flu strain, which killed millions of people during the 1968 pandemic, has reappeared in the world. And all this against the backdrop of a sharp increase in the incidence of Covid, which is again raging in earnest.
“MK” found out what the new epidemic season threatens us all with.
A strain of influenza A (H3N2) virus, called “Hong Kong”, first appeared in the world in 1968 – and caused a pandemic. At that time, humanity was not familiar with it, so the spread of the strain was rapid, and the mortality rate with it reached 2-3%. First, the pandemic virus raged in Southeast Asia, then moved to the United States, Australia and Europe, and then to Africa and South America. And although it took scientists only 4 months to create a vaccine, the pandemic lasted two years, and during this time, according to various sources, from 1 to 4 million people died.
However, since then, this strain of influenza has become seasonal and comes to us almost every year, and therefore is traditionally included in the influenza vaccine. The mortality rate with it, as with other variants of influenza, does not exceed 0.5%. However, the flu caused by this strain causes more severe symptoms and more complications than influenza B.
In 2016, the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova expressed concern about the changes that had begun in strain A (H3N2). “The last time we met with the Hong Kong option was quite a long time ago. Its most intensive spread was in 1968-1969. So many modern people are simply not familiar with it, they have no immunity against it, and there are certain risks in this,” said the head of the department.
However, last year, when the flu came back to us after a break for the Covid pandemic, it was the Hong Kong strain that dominated the structure of influenza incidence in the country. Today in Russia the first cases of Hong Kong flu have already been reported in several regions, but so far doctors do not see any particular cause for alarm. It is noted that almost all registered cases of the disease are still imported; people became infected while staying in other countries.
As Nikolai Kryuchkov, an immunologist and director of a contract research company, told MK, serotype A (H3N2) has been known to humanity for a long time, but since the Hong Kong pandemic it has adapted and is regularly present as one of the key pathogens of seasonal influenza.
Nikolai Kryuchkov adds that in our country, the increase in the incidence of influenza traditionally begins in November and with normal vaccination nothing threatens anyone: “This time I expect an even milder season for influenza and ARVI than last year, which, of course, does not eliminate the risks influenza pandemic.”
But the situation with Covid, which has begun to heat up, is considered alarming by experts. This was stated by the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova. According to her data, today 35-36 thousand cases of illness are registered in the country every day, which is twice as many as a month ago. The largest number of cases is in the capital, the Moscow region and St. Petersburg. However, from these cities the virus is spreading throughout the country, and, according to Popova, “the situation is considered as the beginning of an epidemic.”
Nikolai Kryuchkov notes that the increase began already in October and lasts for at least five weeks: “Now we are observing a pandemic situation in the subacute phase, with a pronounced seasonal component, that is, a higher incidence in late autumn, winter and early spring than in summer. And the current official figures do not reflect the real growth: if earlier the underestimation was 6 times, now it is at least 10 times. No one is conducting mass testing, and in most cases, the disease, as before at Omicron, is mild or asymptomatic, and if a person ends up in the hospital, there is no virus in the upper respiratory tract. Now we have not yet reached the maximum in incidence: it will come in mid-December, then there will be a decline during the New Year holidays, and then the rise to the maximum will begin again in the second half of February. I do not expect large omicron waves to repeat this season, which does not cancel the evolution of the coronavirus, which continues. And there is a possibility, and not a low one, that in one of the next modifications a more pathogenic line or subspecies will appear. And in December, Pirola will dominate in Russia.
As for vaccination against Covid, some experts have stopped seeing the point in it. And recently, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the Gamaleya Center Alexander Gintsburg said that vaccines have ceased to be effective against new strains. “I don’t agree that there is no need to get vaccinated and that the virus is not dangerous,” says Nikolai Kryuchkov. – Since the discovery of the first omicron line, the pathogenicity and lethality of the virus have not decreased. And although the incidence rate has fallen, it is still not low, and even officially we have a large number of deaths, not to mention post-Covid and secondary bacterial complications. And even if the laboratory effectiveness of vaccines has fallen, this does not mean that their preventive effectiveness has also fallen. Today we understand that the first modifications of vaccines around the world worked better than we thought. Although they do little to prevent infection, they do reduce severe disease.”
Newspaper headline:
Viruses come in pairs
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