Popova explained the abolition of quarantine for those in contact with patients with COVID-19

by time news

Mandatory quarantine for people who have been in contact with patients with COVID-19 does not make sense when the Omicron strain is spread, since this variant of the infection is more contagious, but much less likely to cause a severe course of the disease, Anna Popova, head of Rospotrebnadzor, said in an interview with Naila Asker- Zade on the channel “Russia 1”. The journalist published an excerpt from the conversation in her Telegram channel.

“With such a wide spread of the virus in the population, special actions to limit contact simply lose their meaning. This is important for infections that cause another epidemiological process – with measles, with mumps. Today we are working to formalize everything properly and talk about the cancellation [карантина]’ Popova said.

She explained that in Moscow, approximately 40% of people with an identified “omicron” disease proceeded in an asymptomatic form. In addition, this strain does not increase bed occupancy for COVID-19 patients.

“This is a feature of the epidemic process specifically for Omicron. If there is another variant of the strain, then there will probably be a different epidemiological tactic,” Popova concluded.

Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the abolition of quarantine for people who had contact with infected with coronavirus at a meeting with members of the all-Russian public organization “Business Russia”. Prior to this, Rospotrebnadzor reduced quarantine for patients with COVID-19 by half – to one week.

The incidence of coronavirus in Russia began to rise sharply against the backdrop of the spread of the Omicron strain, which was identified in southern Africa in early November last year. This version of the virus is more infectious due to the presence of 32 mutations – this is the maximum among all known strains.

According to the operational headquarters, a record 155,768 new cases of coronavirus have been detected in Russia over the past day. At the same time, the maximum figure for all previous waves of the pandemic was 41,335 cases. 17,792 people were hospitalized, 667 patients with COVID-19 died. The total number of infected in the country has reached almost 12.3 million people, of which 10.4 million have recovered, 333,357 have died.

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