(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) Liang Wannian talks about epidemic prevention: Once relaxed, it will cause a large number of severe cases and deaths
China News Agency, Beijing, April 23. According to Chinese official media reports on the 23rd, Liang Wannian, the expert group leader of the National Health Commission's Leading Group for Epidemic Response and Disposal, said in an interview that the current vaccination rate of the elderly and children in China is relatively low. There are also immunocompromised people who are not vaccinated. Once relaxed, it will cause a lot of severe illness and death, which will be a huge disaster.
Some people think that the symptoms of Omicron infection are very mild, which is basically equivalent to the big flu, and the existing epidemic prevention measures are too strict.
In this regard, Liang Wannian said that the severity of Omicron is much higher than that of influenza in terms of transmission speed and case fatality rate. Once the prevention and control is relaxed, it will cause a large number of severe cases and deaths.
Liang Wannian pointed out that the transmission power of Omicron is far greater than that of influenza and other variants of the new crown before. Without protective measures, a person can transmit an average of 9.5 people.
In terms of case fatality rate, the global average case fatality rate of influenza is 0.1%, while the case fatality rate of Omicron variant strains, real-world data shows that the average case fatality rate is about 0.75%, which is about 7 to 8 times that of influenza, especially for the elderly. The fatality rate of the elderly over the age of 80 exceeds 10%, which is nearly 100 times that of ordinary influenza.
Liang Wannian said that China's elderly population is huge, coupled with the fact that the current vaccination rate of the elderly population has not reached the point where it is sufficient to form an immune barrier against severe illness and death.
There are still so many children in China, so many immunocompromised people, because they have various contraindications, and some people have not been vaccinated.
"Under this circumstance, once we want to relax, regardless of it, its prospects can be clearly seen, and it must be widespread." Liang Wannian said that once these people are infected, multiplied by the fatality rate and severe severity rate, it will cause many severe cases and death.
This number is huge, and it is a huge disaster for a country and a nation.
Liang Wannian pointed out that if a large number of severe cases occur, it will in turn run on the medical system, which will inevitably lead to unmet needs for normal medical services, forming a vicious circle, which will ultimately affect people's normal production and life.
Talking about when the epidemic prevention and control policy can be released, Liang Wannian said that China does not yet have the conditions to relax prevention and control, which is also the most important consideration for insisting on "dynamic clearing" at this stage. Only by being shaken can people's lives and health and the normal development of society and economy be protected to the greatest extent possible.
He pointed out that there are several conditions to relax prevention and control.
First of all, it is necessary to ensure that susceptible people have better immunity. A very important goal of the current dynamic reset is to win the time window; second, the understanding of virus mutation needs to be further deepened; third, treatment beds, human resources, A series of preparations such as effective living security material preparation, transportation distribution, and community management mechanism under epidemic prevention and control.
Liang Wannian said that the core connotation of dynamic clearing is to quickly detect the epidemic and take measures to block the continuous community transmission of the epidemic.
It has two levels. "Dynamic" refers to the continuous deepening of the understanding of the virus. When the virus cannot be eliminated temporarily and the infection cannot be completely prevented, the epidemic situation can be discovered and extinguished together; "zero" has three meanings, including the virus Elimination, disease control and epidemic control, at this stage, are mainly to clear the epidemic.
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