From Vietnam, the alarm has come for a new Covid variant, which combines characteristics of the Indian and English ones. This was stated by the Vietnamese Minister of Health, Nguyen Thanh Long, explaining that the new variant, “ a mix between the Indian and the British ”, has the main characteristic of spreading rapidly through the air and being much more transmissible compared to the previous ones. “More specifically, this is the Indian variant with mutations that originally belonged to the UK variant,” the Vietnamese minister said. The Southeast Asian country has so far recorded 6,396 coronavirus cases and 47 deaths from complications. The new variant would be at the origin of the rapid spread of Covid-19 since the end of April, when 3,600 people were infected in 31 of the 63 cities.
“A destiny is that of having to deal with variants” of the pandemic coronavirus, Fabrizio Pregliasco, a virologist at the State University of Milan, told Adnkronos Salute. This ‘mix’ variant “casts some shadows even with respect to what we are seeing in England, a rate of upward curve”. For now, however, no alarmism: “At the moment it is important to have identified this variant, to have acquired the capacity”. The fact that the pathogen responsible for Covid-19 continues to present itself in ever new forms, according to the virologist “must tell us only one thing: let’s continue on this highway that we hope will be headed towards a new normal, pressing ‘flat’ on the accelerator vaccinations, but controlling the speed of reopening. Progression and gradualness “, reiterated Pregliasco.
“There will always be variations. The more we look for them, the more we will find them.” And the new variant of Vietnam which appears as a mix of Indian and British “is not the first nor will it be the last. We have to continue with what we are doing. We have vaccines that work well with the variants too and we have to watch carefully. These are mutants that come from abroad, but there is nothing different we have to do. It is also time to stop that every time you find a variant from a hidden part of the world it becomes the first news. It seems like a continuum. wolf, wolf. But then people end up not listening “said Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino hospital in Genoa and member of the Covid-19 crisis unit in Liguria.
“It is right to be vigilant – said the expert at Adnkronos Salute – But these topics must go back to being scientific and treated by experts. It is time to stop with bar speeches, as if we were talking about football teams and variants were the players who come from abroad. It is time to stop with the terrorism of variants. Also because every time we did it we were wrong. And also on this new variant, therefore, I would avoid doing it “.
Instead, one must have “common sense, even in the rules that are given, and I have seen little of them so far. Scientists come down from the moon and come to earth. observed the infectious disease specialist – the risk is that no one respects these rules. Instead we must make prescriptions that can be respected and followed. We should reset everything and start again with a simple system of rules. Or we risk tangling up on ourselves and becoming the A country that will come out of the pandemic later. So, let’s get out of the logic of decrees, obligations and prohibitions and aim to make people aware. We must understand that this is a new phase “, concluded Bassetti.