“The pandemic, as we have known it, is no longer there.” Francesco Vaiadirector general of the Spallanzani Institute of Romais not at all concerned about the current number of infections from Covid. But keep watching carefully the spread of the virus in Chinese. “It may happen that if we have a billion or more people infected, a new variant can be determined that could trigger a new outbreak in other parts of the world.”
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Let’s start from Italy. Based on data from the bulletin of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, some regions, including Lazio, are defined as high risk. So should we be concerned?
«It depends on how we read these data: in the week examined by the ISS, a slightly higher incidence per 100,000 people was observed. But since we are in a holiday season and we have not used masks, it seems to me a very acceptable incidence. When you read the data, you need to evaluate other more reliable parameters, which are those of hospitalization and serious illness”.
Are hospitals at risk of increased pressure?
“For now, the situation is under control. Intensive care units are stable, they have not increased despite a slight increase in the infection, while ordinary hospitalizations have decreased. The data from Lazio are quite comforting. We are the Queen’s reference hospital, our center has always remained active, and our numbers are much lower than in previous years. We are still in conditions of acceptability. Let’s not forget that the incidence has increased in the over 90s, because the sketch is an elderly patient who has not been vaccinated, who has other pathologies and therefore, taking Covid, comes to a specialized hospital to be able to treat Covid as well ».
Are there enough drugs to treat both Covid and the flu?
“The situation is quite calm. Due to Covid we have even excessive doses of paxlovid, indeed there is little demand, it is often not used. For the flu, if we talk about antipyretics, there is instead a sort of hoarding syndrome, which is also determined by alarmism. Above all, I see an excess of requests for antibiotics, and for this we must direct the correct use of these drugs, which should only be taken when there is a bacterial infection, and never for a viral infection, and only if prescribed by a doctor . We recall that 33,000 deaths occur every year in Europe due to antibiotic resistance; in Italy there are 11,000 dead. So, let’s not hoard them and take them only when the doctor recommends them”.
According to Thomas Mertens of the Robert Koch Institut, the pandemic is over. What do you think?
«Mertens, whom I wanted on my scientific board, says something absolutely right: the pandemic as we have known it is no longer there. In a document also signed by him together with many other experts almost a month ago, such as Spallanzani, we suggested calling this disease no longer Covid 19 but Covid 23″.
What has changed?
«Covid 23 causes a disease that often stops in the first upper airways, so we do not find pneumonia as in 2019-2020; this happens very rarely, and 85 percent of people who can get pneumonia are elderly and have other conditions.
But in China, Covid is causing deaths, it is not a mild disease.
“That depends on the fact that we have a large hybrid immunity. The sum of the factors that have arisen in Italy, i.e. a high vaccination rate and a wide contagion, therefore natural immunity and vaccine-induced immunity, protects us. So today we are not frightened by the variations present in Italy, we are protected with the vaccines that we have made, and that we must continue to make. The trouble arose because these variants, which are already known to us, have spread in China where the vaccination rate is low, and the vaccines used have not been as efficient as ours. Therefore, we have another type of epidemic that causes another type of pathology that is much milder ».
But does the Chinese situation affect us anyway?
«Of course, it may happen that if we have a billion or more people who have such a high spread of the epidemic, a new variant can be determined that could unleash a new outbreak in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, the Chinese still collaborate too little, there is little transparency on the data. So we are applying to go to China to see what’s going on. In a globalized world, dealing with other countries is not only an ethical issue, but it is a matter of public health“.
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