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In late July, the mutant virus Delta quickly spread across Nanjing City and Jiangsu Province after breaking through the Nanjing Lukou Airport in China. More than ten days later, 15 provinces and municipalities in China have found confirmed cases of the mutant virus, and more than 300 new cases have been confirmed within ten days.
China has strictly controlled the epidemic in the past year, and this outbreak can be regarded as the most severe epidemic that China has faced since the Wuhan epidemic in early 2020. Chinese epidemic prevention experts have successively voiced that Chinese domestic vaccines are still effective against mutated viruses, but their effectiveness has declined.
According to Chinese media reports, on the evening of August 2, Wuhan and Jingzhou, Hubei, respectively notified that 7 people and 2 people were found to be positive for the new crown virus. Moreover, the first cases of nucleic acid-positive persons found in the two places all overlap with the activity trajectories of a tourist group in Huai’an City, Jiangsu Province. This is the first local epidemic in Wuhan after the new crown cases were cleared in June last year.
On the morning of August 3, the Wuhan Municipal Government announced that this city with a population of 11 million had launched a comprehensive nucleic acid test for all employees.
As of August 3, the latest round of the epidemic has spread to 15 provinces and municipalities in China, most of which are related to the Nanjing Airport epidemic. China’s capital Beijing, Shanghai, a municipality directly under the Central Government, and Wuhan, where the new crown epidemic first broke out in 2020, have detected confirmed cases in the last two days.
Nanjing Epidemic: A new round of epidemics caused by the Delta strain in China has spread to more than ten provinces, and prevention and control have been upgraded in many places
The epidemic has expanded, Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan have been diagnosed
The current round of the epidemic started at Nanjing Lukou Airport, where 9 positive cases were found during a regular nucleic acid check on July 20. Nanjing officials later gave the traceability result that the cleaning staff of the outsourcing company was infected while cleaning a passenger plane that arrived in Nanjing from Russia. And spread the virus to the airport security personnel at Lukou Airport, and then spread it to Nanjing and the whole country.
According to data from the China Health Commission, between 0-24 o’clock on August 2nd, 90 new cases were confirmed in China, of which 61 cases were newly added locally. These include 45 new cases in Jiangsu, 1 case each in Shanghai and Beijing, and 3 cases in Hubei. In addition, there were also 23 new asymptomatic infections in the country on the same day. China separately counts confirmed cases and asymptomatic infections. In some European and American countries, asymptomatic infections are also classified as confirmed cases.
The Beijing Municipal Government advises citizens not to go out of Beijing unless necessary, and to reduce tourism and gathering activities.
A total of 7 new positive cases have been confirmed in Wuhan. This is the first confirmed case in Wuhan since it was cleared in June last year. The Wuhan government announced on the 3rd that it will conduct nucleic acid tests on the city’s 10 million people.
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Wuhan experienced a 76-day lockdown in 2020, becoming the first city in the world to adopt similar measures. On August 3, Wuhan immediately announced the launch of a nationwide nucleic acid test for 11 million people in the city after 7 confirmed cases were found.
At the starting point of this round of the epidemic in Jiangsu Province, Zhou Minghao, deputy director of the Provincial Health Commission, revealed at a press conference on August 3 that as of August 2, the province had reported a total of 327 confirmed cases related to Lukou Airport, of which Nanjing There were 220 cases in Yangzhou City and 94 cases in Yangzhou City.
At present, Nanjing City, Yangzhou City, Zhangjiajie City, Zhengzhou City, etc. are classified as medium and high risk areas.
In the second-generation communication chain of Lukou Airport, a large-scale performance in Zhangjiajie, Hunan on July 22, became the focus of concern for the public and experts. More than 2,000 spectators participated in the performance, and all spectators belonged to high-risk groups.
On July 31, Zhangjiajie City, Hunan Province announced 3 new local confirmed cases, and a total of 8 local confirmed cases have been found.
Zhong Nanshan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that although Nanjing has significantly more infected people than Zhangjiajie, he believes that Nanjing has done a very good job in management and control and is not worried about the epidemic. However, he believes that the epidemic in Zhangjiajie is still unknown, because in Zhangjiajie During the “Charming Xiangxi” performance, more than 2,000 people gathered in the theater to watch the performance. In such a closed environment, all audiences now need to be tracked and inspected, and it is very difficult to trace their close contacts.
Zhangjiajie and Nanjing are currently in a state of “closed city”. Zhangjiajie requires strengthening community management, and in principle, no going out is allowed; all roads are subject to traffic control, and irrelevant vehicles are not allowed on the road. As of August 3, Nanjing has conducted the fourth round of nucleic acid testing for more than 9 million people in the city.
Image source,CNS
On July 26, at a nucleic acid testing site in Nanjing, medical staff conducted nucleic acid testing and sampling for citizens.
How protective is the vaccine
According to official Chinese data, as of August 1, China has received 1.669 billion doses of vaccine. The number of people fully vaccinated is unknown. The academic community generally believes that only 70% of the population can achieve herd immunity after being vaccinated with the new crown vaccine.
Some of the confirmed cases and asymptomatic infections have already been vaccinated with China’s domestic vaccine. Whether China’s vaccines can cope with the mutant virus has become a topic of concern.
There was a short-term epidemic in Guangdong Province in May, the source of which was a variant virus from India, Delta. Whether there are new changes in the variant virus at Nanjing Lukou Airport this time, further data and research are needed to explain.
Zhong Nanshan publicly stated that based on the study of the outbreak of the Guangzhou new crown virus Delta mutant strain in May this year, the results proved that China’s domestic vaccine has a protective effect. He said that the preliminary statistics of the study showed that the protective effect of the vaccine on severe cases was 100%, and the protective effects on moderate, mild, and asymptomatic were 76.9%, 67.2%, and 63.2%, respectively. Related research results will be published in the future. However, the BBC was unable to verify where the research data and results Zhong Nanshan claimed came from and the sample size.
Image source,Reuters
Zhong Nanshan also said that China’s Kexing vaccine and Sinopharm vaccine have reduced their comprehensive killing of mutant viruses, but they still have a protective effect. He said that from the clinical immunization results, in response to the new coronavirus variant, the positive conversion rate of the immune serum vaccinated with the Kexingxin crown inactivated vaccine against the delta variant strain decreased slightly, reaching 87.5%; while the Sinopharm vaccine against the alpha strain (Alpha strain) ), Beta and Delta strains all have protective ability, the neutralizing ability to Alpha strain is reduced by 6.7%, and the protective ability is basically unchanged; the neutralizing ability to Beta strain and Delta strain are reduced by 47% and 32, respectively. %. The BBC was also unable to verify the source of these data and research results.
Previously, Zhang Wenhong, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, China, quoted an observation after the marketing of an inactivated vaccine completed in Chile. Higher efficiency. “If the goal is to slow down the spread and reduce the fatality rate, it can afford a certain degree of protection, but as the goal of clearing and eradicating the epidemic, it may be a goal that cannot be achieved by the current vaccine.”
The Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines commonly used internationally are equally ineffective in preventing asymptomatic infections.
According to statistics collected by the Scottish Public Health Agency and published in the authoritative medical journal Lancet, at least two weeks after the second dose of vaccination, the protection rate of Pfizer vaccine against Delta dropped to 79%; and Oxford The protection rate of the Silikon vaccine against Delta is 60%. Shao Yiming, a researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on May 20 that preliminary research results showed that Chinese vaccines “could deal with Indian variants and have a protective effect,” but China did not provide specific effective data. The new crown vaccine is the most effective in preventing death, the most serious consequence of infection, but it is not effective in preventing asymptomatic infections.