How To Deal With The Sporadic Cases Caused By Delta Mutation In 15 Provinces And Cities? Experts: Prepare For The Normalization Of Epidemic Prevention And Control

Intern Peng Xinyi, Lin Yunxiao reports from Beijing

"There's a lot of pressure, but there won't be extremes." On August 2, Feng zhanchun, Dean of the school of medicine and health management of Huazhong University of science and technology, told the 21st century economic reporter that the current situation of China's epidemic situation was expanding.

In the past five days, more than 20 newly diagnosed cases have been reported daily in the mainland, showing a trend of increasing day by day; In the past two days, the number of local confirmed cases rose to more than 50 again. In addition, it is worth noting that since July 31, Henan Province, which has just experienced severe flood disasters, has also seen many new local cases, most of which occurred in the Sixth People's Hospital of Zhengzhou city.

At a press conference held by the State Council's joint prevention and control mechanism on July 31, he Qinghua, a first-class inspector of the Bureau of disease control and prevention of the National Health Commission, pointed out that at present, the main transmission strain of the virus is delta variant strain, which has a strong transmission capacity. During the summer vacation, cluster infection occurred in scenic spots, and the epidemic occurred in the densely populated and mobile International Airport, And spread to the whole country.

Many experts also believe that the current prevention and control measures are still effective, and the mutant strain is still within the scope of vaccine protection.

"Generally speaking, the scale of the epidemic can still be controlled, and there will be no large-scale transmission at the beginning of last year." On August 2, Hu Shanlian, a professor at the school of public health of Fudan University, told reporters of the 21st century economic report that "the most fundamental problem is to strengthen vaccination, and then systematically consider all possible transmission links to improve the quality of epidemic prevention."

According to the data of the National Health Commission, from 0:00 to 24:00 on August 1, 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) and Xinjiang production and Construction Corps reported 98 new confirmed cases, including 43 imported cases and 55 local cases.

The introduction of delta mutant strain caused the epidemic to spread in many places in China

According to the data of the National Health Commission, in the past 10 days, except for July 24, the number of daily confirmed cases in China has maintained a double-digit growth. In the past five days, more than 20 cases of newly diagnosed local cases have been added every day, showing a trend of increasing day by day. In the past two days, the number of local confirmed cases has risen to more than 50 cases again.

As of 24:00 on August 1, according to reports from 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) and Xinjiang production and Construction Corps, there are 1091 confirmed cases (including 24 severe cases) and 28648 close contacts still under medical observation. Among them, 215 cases were reported in Nanjing from 0:00 on July 20 to 24:00 on August 1, and 19 cases were reported in Hunan Province.

In the past July, 328 newly diagnosed cases were reported nationwide, close to the total of the previous five months. 14 provinces have reported new locally confirmed cases or asymptomatic infections. Since July, 27 new confirmed cases have been imported from abroad every day, and the pressure on the import of foreign defense has continued to increase.

As of 15:00 on August 2, there were 4 high-risk areas and 91 medium risk areas in China, which were distributed in 8 provinces of Jiangsu, Henan, Yunnan, Hunan, Liaoning, Fujian, Hubei and Sichuan, among which Nanjing, Yangzhou, Zhengzhou and Ruili of Yunnan had high-risk areas.

At a press conference held by the State Council's joint prevention and control mechanism on July 31, he Qinghua, a first-class inspector of the disease control bureau of the National Health Commission, said that at present, the main transmission strain is delta mutant strain, which has the characteristics of high viral load, rapid transmission speed, rapid replication in vivo, and long negative turning time, which poses greater challenges to the prevention and control work. The main characteristics of the epidemic are as follows: first, the epidemic was caused by the introduction of delta mutant strain, and the virus had strong transmission capacity; Second, the time is special. At present, during the summer vacation, people who go out on vacation gather in the scenic area, and there is a clustering infection in the scenic spot; Third, the outbreak occurred in the densely populated and mobile International Airport, and spread to the whole country.

In addition, the gathering activities also contributed to the rapid spread of the epidemic. In the above-mentioned press conference, Feng Zijian, a researcher of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and prevention, further pointed out that the initial case in Zhangjiajie was also related to the epidemic situation at Lukou Airport in Nanjing. The cases or infected persons transmitted to Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province infected others through tourist attractions and large-scale performances, leading to further transmission, In addition to Nanjing, it is a key epidemic spot with a large number of infections and transmission. Because the transmission occurs in places with dense population and large floating population, the risk of epidemic spreading is still relatively high and the control is difficult.

Exposure of hospital infection control loopholes

In recent days, the epidemic situation has been spreading in various regions, and different regions have also shown different characteristics. For example, Yangzhou shows the characteristics of clustering. On August 1, when inspecting and guiding the epidemic prevention and control work in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province Governor Wu Zhenglong said that the epidemic occurred early and was found relatively late in Yangzhou. In the enclosed places where people gathered, the majority of the elderly people were elderly. Now the situation has not yet bottomed out, and the prevention and control situation is very severe and complex.

In addition, it is worth noting that since the local confirmed cases were cleared last year, the situation of strict prevention and control in Wuhan has also been broken in this wave of epidemic. On August 2, the official wechat of Wuhan Economic Development Zone revealed that on the evening of August 1, during the investigation of the resident personnel of a tourist group in Huai'an, it was found that Tang Mou, a migrant worker at a construction site in Zhuankou Street, had intersection with the activity track of a tourist group in Huai'an when he was waiting at Jingzhou high speed railway station on July 27. On the morning of August 2, Tang and his six close contacts were positive for nucleic acid.

From the perspective of local conditions, there are also many cases of new outbreaks found in the airport. Nanjing, the source of this outbreak, was the first to have new cases in the airport. On the evening of August 2, according to the Shanghai Municipal Office of prevention and control, a medical institution in Pudong, Shanghai reported that a foreign cargo plane service personnel in the cargo area of Pudong airport was positive for NCV nucleic acid. After receiving the report, the CDC immediately carried out investigation and disposal, flow sampling and laboratory test review for relevant personnel and places.

However, the situation of hospital infection in Zhengzhou is particularly severe, and it also exposes relevant management loopholes.

On the evening of July 31, Wang Songqiang, director of Zhengzhou Municipal Center for Disease Control and prevention, introduced at a news conference on epidemic prevention and control in Zhengzhou that the Sixth People's Hospital of Zhengzhou is a designated hospital for overseas asymptomatic infections. At present, most of these cases occurred in Zhengzhou Sixth People's Hospital, involving cleaning personnel, medical staff, inpatients, etc., showing a small-scale aggregation state.

"The outbreak of this epidemic not only has the adverse impact of Rainstorm on hospital infection control, but also exposed some loopholes in the implementation of hospital infection control in a few hospitals." Wang Songqiang pointed out.

At the press conference on the situation of epidemic prevention and control in winter and the setting and management of fever clinics at the end of last year, Jiao Yahui, the inspector general of the medical administration bureau of the National Health Commission, said that the prevention and control of hospital infection in medical institutions has always been the key point of management, and it is also the bottom line and red line that can not be broken through.

The loopholes in the prevention and control of nosocomial infection in Zhengzhou Sixth People's hospital once again sounded the alarm bell for epidemic prevention and control, especially in Henan Province just after the flood.

Zhao Dongyang, deputy director of Henan Provincial Center for Disease Control and prevention, said that after the outbreak, the Provincial Center for Disease Control and prevention carried out the virus gene sequencing in time, and compared with the recently imported virus strains from overseas. From the current results, the epidemic was mainly caused by the delta strain of the new coronavirus.

Facing the characteristics of delta mutant, he Qinghua further pointed out that at present, our prevention and control measures are still effective, and the prevention and control measures should focus on fast, hard, strict, expanding and sufficient“ This conclusion is based on two basic understandings: first, the scientific community's understanding of the virus. It is still a coronavirus, and its source of infection and route of transmission are basically clear. Second, based on the current practice of prevention and control work in our country. Because our current prevention and control measures have dealt with the epidemic situation in Guangdong, Liaoning and Yunnan, the effect of these measures in dealing with these epidemics is remarkable. "

The mutant strain is still within the scope of vaccine protection

In the face of this wave of continuous spread to many parts of the country, whether the overall prevention and control measures need to be changed, and whether the specific prevention and control methods are different from those before? Hu Shanlian, a professor at the school of public health of Fudan University, told reporters in the 21st century economic report that there was no difference. It was just that more systematic consideration should be given to all possible links of transmission, so as to improve the quality of epidemic prevention, reduce the possibility of community and assembly transmission as much as possible, and reduce the intensive contact between each other“ On the whole, the scale of the epidemic can still be controlled, and there will be no large-scale transmission at the beginning of last year. " He said.

On the direction of epidemic prevention measures, Hu Shanlian believes that the most fundamental problem is to strengthen vaccination.

It is reported that in this outbreak, some people who have been vaccinated are still infected with the delta variant. How effective is the new coronal vaccine against the mutant strain? Why can you be infected after vaccination? This issue has received wide attention.

Shao Yiming, a member of the expert group of the vaccine research and development special class of the research and development group, responded that from the current global situation, being infected after vaccination is called a breakthrough case, which is a kind of normal, not an exception. However, the breakthrough cases are still a few of the global population vaccinated with more than 3 billion doses of vaccine. According to the overall judgment of clinical data, all kinds of variants are still within the scope of vaccine control.

Previously, the reporter of 21st century economic report also learned from Kexing biological that its real-world research in large-scale epidemic countries showed that the protection rate was good. The protection rate for all symptoms and mild diseases was more than 65%, and the protection for the prevention of severe cases, ICU intensive care unit and death cases was 87.5%, 90.3% and 86.3%, respectively.

In this regard, Shao Yiming believes that this fully demonstrates that our country's vaccine can effectively reduce hospitalization, severe illness and mortality. The existing studies also show that the global vaccines of various technical routes do show a certain degree of decline in the protection of new crown mutants, but for this variant, it is still within the scope of vaccine protection. In particular, its neutralizing antibody and protective rate still exist to a certain extent.

On July 31, academician Zhong Nanshan disclosed in his speech on the current situation and judgment of the new coronavirus epidemic situation that the preliminary statistics on the outbreak of delta variant of Guangzhou new coronavirus in 2021 showed that the protective effect of the vaccine on severe cases was 100%, and the protective effects on moderate, mild and asymptomatic cases were 76.9%, 67.2% and 63.2%, respectively. However, none of the 13 critically ill patients in the last outbreak in Guangzhou were vaccinated.

For the follow-up prevention and control, some countries, including Singapore, have given up control. Hu Shanlian believes that prevention and control is still needed, and it is not advisable to give up prevention and control. However, it is impossible to keep zero cases all the time. At present, the epidemic areas are small-scale and controllable“ To prevent the formation of some positive outbreaks and large-scale epidemics. Transmission in some communities is still possible, and it is necessary to prepare for the normalization of epidemic prevention and control. "