The “centaur” has not yet entered the territory of the Russian Federation

Gennady Onishchenko, Honored Doctor of Russia, Epidemiologist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, announced this during a briefing at the NSN on the current situation with the incidence of coronavirus.

According to him, in the Russian Federation now the dominant strains are BA.4 and BA.5:

“If we talk about the“ centaur ”, then it was first found in India; in another 10 countries it was recorded and “determined the weather”. In Russia, there are isolated cases. We should also mention our original Russian mutation – the delta omicron, which was found back in May: today it does not play any role in the epidemiological process. But this does not mean at all that the epidemic process has ended, it continues and it is not known what else nature and we (we, because much in this process depends on us) are preparing in the future.”

But already now, as Gennady Onishchenko noted, it can be stated that the situation in the world with the coronavirus disease is getting worse:

“At 5:00 Moscow time on August 16, 591 million 83 thousand 945 cases were registered in the world; over the past day – 854 thousand 299 cases. These are data for those countries that submit reports to the WHO, but there are still countries that do not even register the incidence, because they do not have healthcare. Over the past day, 2,81 people have died from the consequences of the coronavirus in the world.

Among developed countries, the most intensive epidemiological process is in France, where the incidence is 52,202 cases per 100,000 population. For comparison, in the world this figure is 7,583 per 100,000. That is, in France, the intensity of the epidemic process is at least 6 times higher than the average in the world. <…> In the Russian Federation, this figure is 12,995.”

According to Gennady Onishchenko, according to data for August 15, Moscow is the most intense focus in terms of incidence:

“This is not because nothing is being done there, but because it is connected with the peculiarities of the city: with a high population density, with a large number of visitors, and from all over the world. During the day on August 15, 5,734 cases of infection were recorded in Moscow. On average for a week – 6 thousand 900 cases per day. St. Petersburg is in second place in this indicator, and the growth there is quite serious. Then come the Moscow region, Sverdlovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, Samara and Rostov regions. These are the largest regions that are now “making the weather” for the whole country.

At the same time, as Gennady Onishchenko recalled, about 6 million people are vaccinated in Moscow (that is, 49% of the total population and 59.1% of the adult population). In the country as a whole, according to official statistics, more than 82 million 629 thousand people received at least one component of the vaccine; 2 components were received by 75 million 250 thousand people.

“It would seem that these are not bad numbers, but look at what is being done with revaccination: a total of 15 million 956 thousand have been revaccinated. At the same time, 69 million 977 thousand are subject to revaccination. And the number of those to be revaccinated over time only increases, as people do not want to be revaccinated.”

Meanwhile, despite the difficult epidemiological situation, the academician does not yet see the need to vaccinate children.

“I don’t see the need to vaccinate children. The current epidemiological situation does not give us such grounds. Almost three years have passed since the appearance of the coronavirus, and our children, thank God, are not yet at risk, unlike the older generation.”

And the older generation, as Gennady Onishchenko reminded, must be revaccinated and comply with restrictions, including the mask regimen.

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo by Sergey Kiselev / Moskva Agency