The pandemic in Russia is close to ending
The world has already passed the worst part of the pandemic, and it is gradually coming to an end.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports that Alexander Lukashev, a virologist, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and director of the Institute of Medical Parasitology, Tropical and Vector-Borne Diseases at Sechenov University, spoke about this in an interview with Izvestia, answering the question of what stage of the pandemic we are in now.
“I think it’s in a descending stage, because in many countries an immune layer is developing. We already know that the number of people who have been exposed to the virus and have developed immunity to it is much higher than the number of officially recorded cases. This is true for all countries. And it is known for sure that some part of people were initially immune or practically immune to COVID-19, because they have immunity after encountering other respiratory coronaviruses,” Lukashev said.
He noted that a study conducted in Germany showed that people who had cellular immunity to coronavirus even before the pandemic constituted a third of the entire population.
“More precisely, a third of the examined group, but the group was quite large. We can assume that in Russia there are a third of such citizens. But we don’t know what this means in practice: are these people not sick at all or are they only mildly sick? It is only known that they have cells that are capable of recognizing and killing their cells infected with coronavirus,” the doctor noted.
According to him, it is quite realistic that population immunity will be formed in Russia by August, and in megacities - Moscow, St. Petersburg - these deadlines can be achieved earlier.
“Even if the antibodies have disappeared, memory cells remain, and the second encounter with the infection should be easier. Here again we don’t have statistics on how much easier it is. Even when first infected, many cases are asymptomatic or very mild. Most of those who have recovered from the disease will not get sick at all,” Lukashev concluded.
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