The epidemic curve in Italy is still rising. There are 84,700 new Covid cases in the last 24 hours, against 86,334 yesterday but above all the 56,386 of last Saturday, a 50% increase on a weekly basis. The swabs processed are 325,588 (yesterday 316,040) with a positivity rate that falls from 27.3 to 26%. The deaths are 63 (yesterday 72). The total number of victims since the beginning of the pandemic thus rises to 168,488.
Hospitalizations are on the rise: 11 more intensive care units (yesterday +3), which thus become 275 in all with 40 admissions per day. And 205 more are ordinary hospitalizations (yesterday +238) for a total of 7,035, the 18th consecutive day of growth. This is what emerges from the daily bulletin of the Ministry of Health.
Positive Italians are currently 965,564. In total, 18,695,954 people have been infected since the beginning of the pandemic. The discharged and healed are 17,561,902, with an increase of 49,322.
The cases of pneumonia caused by the SarsCoV2 virus that require assisted ventilation return to increase in Italy and the most recent of the Omicron 5 sub-variants is responsible. This was stated by the national president of the 118 emergency health service, Mario Balzanelli. “We are starting to see things we no longer saw: while previous versions of Omicron spared the lower airways, we are now starting to see pneumonia caused by Omicron BA.5, which is able to reach the pulmonary alveoli.” “Viral forms of pneumonia requiring assisted ventilation” are observed.
Long Covid risk on children up to 46.5%
24% of children and adolescents who have passed the acute phase of Covid with mild or no symptoms suffer from disorders related to Sars-CoV-2 infection at least 2 months after recovery and up to 9 months from the same. These are the results, published in the scientific journal Italian Journal of Pediatrics, of the first multicentre study in Italy on Long Covid, which saw the City of Health of Turin as the leader. The study shows that having developed symptoms of Covid-19 in the acute phase significantly increases the risk of Long Covid for children and adolescents, taking it from 11.5% to 46.5%, while having concomitant diseases (asthma, rhinitis allergic or otherwise) does not cause any added risk. “The data – observes the City of Health – confirm and consolidate the value of the recommendations expressed by the Italian Society of Pediatrics and by numerous other pediatric scientific societies: children and adolescents who have contracted Covid, even if mildly, must be monitored by parents and in case of symptoms should always be visited by the pediatrician “.
Vaccines, Parisi on ISS children study: they avoid intensive therapies
According to the Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi, the data according to which the anti Covid-19 vaccine avoids the hospitalization of children in intensive care, contained in the article published on 30 June last in the magazine, deserves a great deal of emphasis. The Lancet from the National Institute of Health (Iss) and the Ministry of Health. Parisi himself notes this, according to whom “it is important to emphasize” the fact that, from the comparison between a large number of vaccinated and unvaccinated children aged between 5 and 11 years, “15 hospitalizations were observed in the unvaccinated in intensive care and two deaths, while among the vaccinated children there were no hospitalizations in intensive care or deaths “.
For Parisi these data are “important and extremely encouraging because they have enormously reduced the number of hospitalizations in intensive care”, even if “in research these data are a little hidden and could be overlooked”. It is all the more important to highlight them, in light of the fact that the age group considered in the research “is poorly vaccinated” and that “about one third of the 5 to 11 year olds had the Covid-19 vaccine“.
For safety reasons, adds the Nobel, the dosage of the vaccine for children aged 5-11 is three times lower than that for adults: “an element that makes the vaccine very safe as regards side effects. . Now the study by ISS and the Ministry of Health indicates that the vaccine also indicates a very strong reduction in the possibility of admission to intensive care “.