South Africa's 'positive rate of 22.4%' soars... "Omicron propagation seems to be fast"

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Let's learn more about Omicron mutation with medical reporter Dong-chan Cho, who still has a lot of questions.

[Cho Dong-chan / Medical reporter (specialist): Among the indicators to guess the speed of transmission, there is a positive rate compared to the test. In Korea, it is about 2%. If 100 people are tested, 2 people will be confirmed. In South Africa, it was 2% until the end of October, but it went up to 9% in mid-November when Omicron is popular. It soared 16.5% last week and 22.4% yesterday. The rate of propagation of Omicron is expected to be very fast.]

[Cho Dong-chan / Medical reporter (specialist): Reinfection after recovering from Corona is called breakthrough infection. In South Africa, the completion rate of vaccination is less than 30%, so we did not calculate the breakthrough infection separately, but it is also expected to be high. Of the 43 variants of Omicron, the core has been narrowed down to three. These are the K417, G446, and E484 mutations. When the University of Washington looked at how much each of them evaded neutralizing antibodies, it also evaded neutralizing antibodies made with vaccines well. That means that the vaccine's preventive effect is low, and the number of breakthrough infections is expected to increase in the future.]

[Cho Dong-chan / Medical reporter (specialist): I will explain while looking at the picture.

The University of Washington in the United States conducted a separate experiment with a neutralizing antibody for natural infection and a neutralizing antibody for a vaccine.

Neutralizing antibodies made by Omicron's vaccine were less evasive.

This means that those who have been vaccinated are less likely to get microns than those who recover.

Also, if you look at a post posted on Twitter by a South African hospital on November 27, even in South Africa, you need to be hospitalized if your symptoms are severe.

65% of hospitalized patients were not vaccinated, and 35% were only vaccinated.

Evidence is emerging that existing vaccines have a severe preventive effect on

.]

[Cho Dong-chan / medical reporter (specialist): No.

Conversely, there are people who are seriously ill because they spread it to asymptomatic people.

Symptoms depend on how strong an individual's immunity is.

The more the virus moves from person to person, the more likely it is to mutate.]