18:34 03.01.2021(updated 21:48 04.01.2021) Short url
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Russia is investigating information on the possible emergence of a new deadly “disease X” in Congo. However, an epidemiologist considers such fears as “premature” and explains that similar symptoms can appear in non-infectious diseases.
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Russian health agency Rospotrebnadzor is studying all data and publications on the situation in Congo after reports of the possible emergence of a new deadly “disease X”, the agency’s press service reported to Sputnik.
According to the deputy director of the Central Institute for Research in Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor, Alexandre Gorelov, it would be “premature” to fear a new pandemic.
“I think it is premature to fear a new pandemic, because the symptoms of hemorrhagic fever can also be seen in classic hemorrhagic and allergic vasculitis. It can be a non-infectious somatic disease, or the congenital fragility of blood vessels, which increases under the influence of infectious agents, or the manifestation of autoimmune diseases, ”he explains. .
There is no need to panic, therefore, until the agent causing the new disease is detected, says Gorelov.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, the doctor who unveiled the new Congolese disease to CNN last December, should have declared it in the scientific community, believes the member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Onishchenko.
“Now I think the World Health Organization should form an expert group and go and sort this out,” he said.
“Disease X” detected in Congo
Previously, Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, a Kino-Congolese virologist who was involved in the discovery of the Ebola virus in 1976, warned of a new pandemic which risks being much more “apocalyptic”.
He said that a woman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, showing symptoms resembling those caused by the Ebola virus, however, tested negative for this infection and other illnesses.
“We are now in a world where new pathogens will appear. This poses a threat to humanity, ”Muyembe-Tamfum said in an interview with CNN.
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