The leader of the Department of Preventive Medicine (Ministry of Health) said that this variant could overwhelm the old strains of SARS-CoV-2.
At the meeting to provide medical information on the afternoon of June 27, Prof. Dr. Phan Trong Lan, Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health, said that over the past time, Vietnam’s key surveillance system, especially institutes, hospitals, and bureaus regularly take samples and sequence genes.
“Thereby, we recorded that Vietnam had the penetration of the BA.5 variant of Omicron”, Mr. Lan confirmed.
According to him, when a new variant enters, we will face the risk that it will overwhelm the old one. However, this is inevitable when people exchange and travel in the new normal.
Professor Lan affirmed that the Ministry of Health will continue to actively monitor the new variant, thereby implementing appropriate response measures.
Also informed at the meeting, Prof. Phan Trong Lan said that through some initial small assessments, the BA.4 and BA.5 variants have the ability to spread faster than the previous BA.1 and BA.2.
Regarding the ability to cause severe disease of this new variant, world medicine currently has no concrete evidence. However, some unpublished studies have also shown them to cause more severe diseases.
“However, to get a more complete picture of this mutation. We still need to have more methodical studies,” emphasized the leader.
Around the world, WHO also initially recorded BA.4 and BA.5 mutations that have appeared in many countries in Europe and America.
Regarding the current situation of the Covid-19 epidemic, Professor Lan said that although the number of cases and deaths due to Covid-19 globally tends to decrease, in some areas, the epidemic is still complicated, new variants appear.
“In the world, the number of Covid-19 cases increased by 8%, the number of deaths decreased by 3%. However, many countries are worried about a new outbreak in the summer. The number of Covid-19 cases in the world is not stable, sometimes increase, sometimes decrease, unevenly across regions,” he said.
Present at the meeting, a representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) also said that the world is still in a pandemic. At the same time, WHO warned that a new variant could complicate the disease and increase it again. Therefore, countries still need to maintain response measures such as vaccination, key surveillance, etc.
@ Zing News
