Indian variant, or Omicron 5, in the sights of experts. If on the one hand caution is called for against any alarmism about the virus that is rapidly spreading to other countries, on the other hand, attention is focused on the massive contagiousness of the new sub-variant BA.2.75. Here is what experts say in Italy, from Massimo Ciccozzi to Matteo Bassetti, passing through Walter Ricciardi, Fabrizio Pregliasco and Maria Rita Gismondo.
CICCOZZI – On the new sub-variant “there are still no scientific data that show us a greater contagiousness than Omicron 5. We are already studying it but it is too early to hazard a conclusion. Since the data are scarce, I would avoid confusion and generate alarmism in an already delicate situation “. So at time.news Health Massimo Ciccozzi, head of the Medical Statistics and Epidemiology Unit of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Bio-Medico Campus in Rome. “We do not have a calculation of the membrane potentials of this sub-variant – adds Ciccozzi – which could be more contagious but from here to say that it is already 5 times more contagious it passes. And there is really no data on lethality. So we are calm down, let’s study and try to understand. It can be an important thing or it can be like the Omicron 3 that has appeared and disappeared. ” According to Ciccozzi “other sub-variants will arrive and many with immunological ‘escape’, the virus must change in order to survive in a vaccinated population or which has already had the disease. We must study these steps and be ready”.
BASSETTI – “It seems the beginning of a new problem because the number of mutations affecting this new variant” of the coronavirus “is staggering.” So at time.news Salute Matteo Bassetti, director of Infectious Diseases of the San Martino hospital in Genoa. “It is a very mutated virus and this will lead to an important increase in contagiousness and it is not a positive fact because it will mean having an R0 index that risks being over 20 – says Bassetti – It could be more contagious than the most dangerous respiratory virus. But it is difficult to predict at the table, in the laboratory and on the basis of these data, the danger of Ba.2.75. The 45 mutations in common with Ba.2 and then another 15 different, therefore about 60 in total, suggest that it may be able to evade the immune defenses of vaccines and the natural ones. But up to now all the mutations of the variants have not given more serious forms of Covid “.
“The variants will always be there and will continue to emerge, we have to get used to and live with an ups and downs of the positive curve”, concludes Bassetti.
PREGLIASCO – The new sub-variant Omicron BA.2.75, reported in India, “is already being seen around the world, for example in Oceania and England, so the arrival here in Italy could be very rapid” considering the super contagiousness described for this umpteenth ‘version’ of Sars-CoV-2. The virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco, heard by time.news Salute, foresees that we will have to deal quickly.
According to the professor of Hygiene at the State University of Milan, medical director of Irccs Galeazzi, “another undulation emerges in the context of that trend that I have described several times as a succession of descents and ascents”. Coexistence with the coronavirus will be characterized according to Pregliasco by “an endemic trend, but not calm. This virus is not a ‘trivial’ presence”, he warns. Returning to the new sub-variant, however “the characteristics of the disease it causes still remain to be understood – points out the virologist – It is however a further confirmation of the evolution of Sars-CoV-2”.
RICCIARDI – “The data arriving from India on the new variant covid BA.2.75 are not encouraging because they describe a mutation in which there is a structural modification of the Spike protein. And it would be an even more contagious variant” in the framework currently dominated by Omicron 5. To tell time.news Health Walter Ricciardi, professor of Hygiene at the Catholic University and advisor to the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza. “But we have to wait to find out more. We need more data and we have to wait to understand what will happen, first of all in India, where it has been isolated,” he adds. “We should understand if this variant – he continues – has the conditions to become dominant, to spread. The first data certainly worry us, but for now we need an observation phase”, highlights Ricciardi.
Nothing unexpected in the high Covid numbers of these days in Italy: “They are the result of the decisions taken in recent months”. When “removing the masks indoors, authorizing crowded outdoor and indoor events, removing the mask on the plane, encouraging dangerous socializing with the most contagious virus on the face of the earth, what should we expect differently?” .
For Ricciardi “there is a consequence of the choices. With this very contagious virus, instead of raising the barriers, we have removed them. And this can only lead to a resumption of the pandemic”.
GISMONDO – The new sub-variant is the sign that we are moving towards “classic viral endemization”, according to microbiologist Maria Rita Gismondo. “We are witnessing this – he explains to time.news Salute – if the evolutionary trend of Sars-CoV-2 continues like this. The story of pandemics tells us so: viruses become much more contagious, but their pathogenicity is attenuated”, underlines the director of the Laboratory of clinical microbiology, virology and diagnostics of bio-emergencies at the Sacco hospital in Milan, convinced that the new mutant “will certainly also arrive in Italy, as it has arrived in other Western countries. It is impossible to exclude that it will also arrive from we “because” viruses do not know the concept of border “, reiterates Gismondo. BA.2.75 “it seems to be much more contagious”, confirms the expert, “even if this news comes to us from India – she observes – where the hygienic-sanitary conditions are certainly not comparable with ours”. In any case, “I don’t think we can talk about a new problem for the summer or autumn”, reassures Gismondo, but rather a further step on the road from the pandemic to endemic.