Let’s say it in the Greek alphabet: delta is very dangerous, omicron is much more contagious, but with much less severe symptoms. And most importantly, the third dose, the “booster” also covers from this one. But Matteo Bassetti, head of the Ligurian Regional Intercompany Department of Infectious Diseases and director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino Polyclinic Hospital in Genoa, the largest in Europe, also says that he literally hears it all.
Bassetti’s proposal
And launches a proposal to the Scientific Technical Committee, during the usual weekly appointment to take stock of the progress of the pandemic organized by Giovanni Toti in the Transparency Room of the Liguria Region: “Three quarters of those hospitalized in hospitals such as San Martino do not have the symptoms of Covid, but are only positive for Sars-Cov-2 and have other problems. The care burden is not the same. It is evident that the weight is completely different. There are those who have a broken femur, who are nephropathic, who are heart patients. It is one thing to have Covid patients in intensive care or infectious diseases, another thing is to have a patient with a urinary infection vaccinated and with a positive swab in the same ward. I hope that the CTS acknowledges this need “.
The data and the current situation
In short, Bassetti explains with the words of those in the ward that the current legislation on the classification of “color” regions is at least color blind, precisely because it is based on a clinical and vaccine picture of an Italy that is no longer that. The director of the San Martino Infectious Diseases Clinic explains that “even for the average intensity, today the most serious patients and the only ones who resort to non-invasive ventilation are those who are not vaccinated. In vaccinated subjects, on the other hand, we no longer see the disease we saw two years ago, also seen in the second and third wave “.
“Shorter” Covid
But above all Covid has become shorter, obviously for those who have made the vaccine: “In vaccinated people, the duration of symptoms is significantly shorter than in unvaccinated subjects, as is the duration of positive swab, which is lower”. Bassetti focuses heavily on monoclonal antibodies, which see Liguria clearly in first place in Italy for use compared to the population and immediately began to study the availability of monoclonals that also work against the omicron variant. And he compulses the scientific data that his virologist colleagues from all over the world have just sent him, with whom he is in direct and continuous contact to exchange numbers and data on the infection and the possibilities of treatment: “In this regard, I can confirm what the data from both South Africa and England show: that is, that the omicron variant is more contagious but less severe and is covered by vaccination with three doses. I hope this can be a further stimulus at the third dose ”.
Friendship with Toti
Alongside Matteo Bassetti, Giovanni Toti, with whom they became true friends, also because the president of Liguria chose to trust him and science and therefore always supported him, unlike the rest of politics, even from the center-right, ready to exalt him when Bassetti was considered an “aperturist” only to later download him when he became a “vaccinist” and a “penalty taker”, without seeing that in both cases he reasoned on the basis of numbers and scientific observation.
The situation in Liguria
And also Toti, fresh from a tour of the hospitals of the Ligurian capital, since he is also the councilor for health, explains: “Although the situation is returning to be heavy, it is not remotely comparable to what we have experienced in other periods: ’employment of intensive care is substantially stable and the increase in patients continues to have a much lower multiplier in proportion to the spread of the infection compared to previous waves ”.
But the most significant data of the Ligurian governor are those on the registry analysis of the infections, radically changed: “As regards the incidence in the different age groups, the driver is represented by children aged between 6 and 12, followed by a high incidence also in teenagers, with an increase in circulation occurring in all age groups “.
Words translated into numbers from the wards by Angelo Gratarola, who is in charge of the intercompany regional emergency-urgency department, that is the first aid network of the Liguria Region, under attack especially in the province of Imperia, whose highest numbers are mainly due to the proximity to France and the consequent presence of frontier workers, so much so that many municipalities closed their schools early.
Stable intensive care
Gratarola, who has the complete picture of hospitalizations at hand, explains: “For weeks, intensive care has been on a fairly stable level. A fact that I interpret as positive, as we are probably seeing a very different disease than last year. For example, the large sub-intensive therapy reservoirs, where we had hundreds of patients ventilated with helmets or other forms of respiratory support, are now almost a thing of the past, far fewer. In this sense, vaccination has made it possible to change the face of this disease and not to overload intensive care in a critical way, allowing the management of a large part of patients in medium intensity “.
And, of course, all this is closely linked to the vaccine: “Of course, in order to guarantee this type of trend it is necessary that there is a continuous and massive adhesion to the vaccination campaign with the third dose and also by those who have not yet done the vaccine. I remember that in intensive care, 70-80 percent of serious cases are people who have never been vaccinated and who therefore suffer the most from the severe evolution of the disease ”.
Data to be separated
And the head of the emergency departments also explains that the fact that there are some more vaccinated in the ICU than in recent weeks depends only on a methodological error in counting, where the presence of Covid is counted before the real disease that led to the ICU patient: “People vaccinated in ICU often have problems other than Covid. The core is still the virus, but the share of critically ill patients hospitalized for other pathologies who have no pulmonary alteration but are positive is growing and are counted among Covid-related ICU admissions. This group should be separated, because these patients are not an expression of the burden that Covid patients generate on hospitals: they would be hospitalized anyway because they have other pathologies “.
And the point is all here: for many people the vaccine is really transforming Covid into a seasonal flu and there would still be intensive vaccinations for comorbidities.
The others are all, or almost all, No Vax.