Ukraine is going through the most difficult period since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and the current wave of COVID-19 is about five times more intense in intensity than the autumn one.
This opinion was expressed by a freelance advisor Ministry of Health, infectious disease physician Olga Golubovskaya in an interview UNN… She noted that already in October, November and December 2020, there was a collapse in some hospitals, in particular support ones.
“But now it is all much more intense and worse than it was during the entire period of the pandemic,” said the doctor.
She noted that it is more convenient for doctors to say that the current period of the pandemic is the third wave, although the terminology and approaches to periodization may differ. “The first for us was in the spring, the second for us was in the fall, the third for us – this is the situation that now everything is on the rise,” said Golubovskaya.
The infectious disease specialist explained that the exact reasons for this situation can only be named over time. In addition, practice has shown that many coronavirus forecasts do not come true. Also, new mutations appear that “surprise”.
In Ukraine, a “British” variant of the virus has been identified, due to which the disease has changed, the doctor said.
“We now have to rebuild, retrain, rethink that category of people who are difficult, how to lead them, because, I repeat, this is another disease, it has become younger, it has become longer, more often we see exacerbations,” she said.
“We, clinicians, see everything much earlier, and only then we get confirmation of this. We saw first that the clinical picture had changed. And we talked about this, that this is probably due to a new strain. And literally a few days later, we accidentally discovered this a strain with a specific mutation, the so-called 501st mutation, it can be in all strains, but we have a strain from the UK circulating, “Golubovskaya added.
She pointed out that Ukraine is not the only one where the difficult situation with COVID-19 has developed. So, only a few countries were able to stop a massive epidemic, in particular those where extremely harsh measures were introduced and from the very beginning there were very strong anti-epidemic protection systems.
“For now, we just need to survive this at least a wave. I really hope that by the summer it should still weaken a little, taking into account the seasonality, taking into account the fact that the layer of immune persons will already be larger. Unfortunately, in our country at the expense of natural infection, but the vaccination campaign will also affect this process, “the expert summed up.
As previously wrote OBOZREVATEL:
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