(ANSA) – PERUGIA, JUNE 16 – The number of Covid-positive hospitalized patients in Umbria has dropped below 30 and this has not happened since the summer of 2021. However, the omicron variant was not yet circulating at the time, which proved to be much more contagious than the delta of two years ago. This is the picture that emerges from the data on the Region’s website.
As of June 16, there are 29 hospitalized, none in intensive care, 13 in the Covid medical area and 16 in the other wards.
“By now this virus has become endemic” notes Professor Antonella Mencacci, director of the microbiology laboratory of the Perugia hospital and of the university’s specialization school, responding to ANSA. “People are almost all vaccinated several times – she adds – and have had the infection at least once, if not two or three.
Of course swabs are now only done on symptomatic patients and the molecular ones that we can analyze are less and less.
However, we continue with the sequencing that allows us to keep the characteristics of the virus under control”.
What microbiologists are currently looking at are recombinant variants of various lineages of Ba.2 or Ba.2 and Ba5. “It means – explains Professor Mencacci – that the virus reassorts its own material. It is important to continue with the sequencing to understand if there were changes in the S gene and therefore in the spike protein that would allow Sars-CoV-2 to circumvent the protection of vaccines“. (HANDLE).
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