The epidemic curve in Italy is still slightly decreasing. There are 48,714 new cases of Covid in the last 24 hours, against 11,606 yesterday (but with fewer swabs like every Monday) and above all the 58,360 of last Tuesday. The processed swabs are 297,268 (yesterday 80,319) with a positivity rate that rises from 14.4% to 16.4%. There are 120 deaths (yesterday 39), for a total of 178,753 since the beginning of the pandemic. Intensive care units increased by 6 units (yesterday -3) and with 37 admissions per day they became 232 in all; hospitalizations instead are 18 less (yesterday +107), for a total of 7,106. This is what emerges from the daily bulletin of the Ministry of Health.
The region with the highest number of cases is Lombardy with 9,979 infections, followed by Veneto (+6.363), Piedmont (+4.822), Lazio (+4.644) and Tuscany (+3.485). The total number of cases since the beginning of the pandemic rises to 23,408,393. The discharged / healed in the last 24 hours are 57,034 (yesterday 22,923) for a total that rises to 22,729,641. The currently positive are 8,441 less (yesterday -11,357) and return by a whisker below half a million, 499,999, of which 492,661 in home isolation.
Ricciardi: “Pounding campaign in November”
“It takes a pounding campaign for the anti-Covid, an advertisement for life. Because between October and November, when the cold arrives and we stay indoors, the children will get sick and return home. Here the elderly who are not vaccinated in turn will fall ill with many risks ” Walter RicciardiProfessor of Hygiene at the Catholic University and former consultant to the former Minister of Health Roberto Speranza, during the conference “Pandemics, pharmaceutical strategy and ecological transition: the challenges of the health union and the war in Ukraine”. “We have to overcome the vaccination hesitation”, he said, “we are talking about a 20-30 percent of the population. The first campaign went very well especially on the boys because they could return to a normal life. In Italy, but also in France, there is one more phenomenon than in the rest of Europe, science is not taught well in schools and we have children and then citizens who are illiterate in terms of health and science, who do not know how to behave well, for example on food choices, but also in sexual behavior ‘ ‘.
Brusaferro: “Difficult to make predictions”
“Today it is difficult to make predictions: we have a survey network and some data on new variants arise from our daily work. All we can do is to obtain solid information as soon as possible and share it with those who are called to make decisions”. This was stated by the president of the Higher Institute of Health (Iss), Silvio Brusaferro, during the conference “Pandemics, pharmaceutical strategy and ecological transition”. At this moment, “despite having a high circulation of the virus, we have a limited impact in terms of employment of intensive care units and medical departments”, he said: “At the national and supranational level, mechanisms are being developed that are valid when the risk will be contained or the Covid it won’t have the attention it has today. “
From bivalent vaccine no greater response than original
“Administered as a fourth dose, the bivalent mRna vaccine targeting Omicron Ba.4 / Ba.5 and the ancestral Sars-CoV-2 strain did not induce superior neutralizing antibody responses in humans over the time period tested compared to anti-vaccineCovid original monovalent “. This is the conclusion reached by a US study, not yet published and therefore not yet peer-reviewed, but available in preprint version on the” BioRxiv “platform. The work signed by researchers from Columbia University in New York and of the University of Michigan focuses on new bivalent vaccine formulations.
In the United States, Moderna and Pfizer boosters upgraded to Omicron 4-5 are authorized for emergency use. “Despite their widespread use as a vaccine booster, little is known about the antibody responses induced in humans,” the authors write. In addition, “the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 and its numerous sub-lineages have shown an extraordinary ability to evade humoral immune responses induced by previous vaccinations or infections”.