India’s epidemic has been like an avalanche out of control, according to April 24, according to India’s official website: India’s new crown confirmed cases have reached 16610418 cases; in the past 24 hours, India’s new confirmed cases up to 346786 cases; in the past three days, India’s new cases are close to 1 million, a “world record “! And in India’s capital, New Delhi, 1 person dies every 5 minutes!
The remains of the backlog, decomposing people burn the bodies in the street
Because of the constant increase in the number of bodies, many crematoriums have been overloaded with incinerators, which have barely stopped since the outbreak of the epidemic.
The continuous work has caused very serious damage to the incinerators, with light parts damaged and heavy machines scrapped.
However, according to The Hindu and The New York Times, the actual number of people who died in India from the epidemic is “much higher” than the official reported figure, according to Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan. is two to five times the number of reported deaths.”
Because cremation sites across India are overflowing, some crematoriums are receiving five times the number of bodies straight up. People in India have to stand in line for at least 12 hours to have their loved ones’ bodies burned, and sometimes they can’t get a turn for 12 hours.
Because the bodies can not be burned in time, some have even begun to stink. They do not want the bodies of their loved ones rotting, they have to choose to burn the bodies in the street, the scene is miserable. At one time, the streets and alleys of India were constantly on fire and smoke.
It was like an inferno on earth.
The Indian mutant virus has started to spread in the United States
Earlier, the British government decided to put India on the red immigration list, banning all Indian citizens and permanent residents except British and Irish citizens from entering the country. Hong Kong and New Zealand had banned travelers from India for a period of time. Sri Lankan media, citing the country’s tourism minister, reported that flights between India and Sri Lanka have been suspended. However, there was no official statement in this regard and airlines said they were still waiting for confirmation.
According to Canada’s health minister, half of the people who previously tested positive for coronavirus after arriving by plane in Canada were from India.
But as of press time, the U.S. White House remains silent, and the government and airlines have not taken any no-fly action against India! It is reported that airfares from Mumbai and Delhi to New York and San Francisco have tripled.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is only advising U.S. citizens not to travel to India.
“Given the current situation, travelers should avoid traveling to India. Even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for infection and transmission of the new coronavirus variant and should avoid travel to India. If you must travel to India, then be fully vaccinated prior to your trip.” The U.S. government was also advised to comply with all social distance measures of the U.S. government’s health protection agencies while traveling to India.
It is too late, however, as an Indian variant of the virus has already emerged in California.
On April 8, local time in the U.S. West, according to CNBC News, Stanford University researchers recently discovered five new cases of the new crown “double mutation” strain in the San Francisco Bay Area and said it is more contagious and may be resistant to existing vaccines.
The CDC’s Walensky warned that “the end is near” as U.S. states lift restrictions. She urged people to get vaccinated and to continue to follow public health precautions, including wearing masks and maintaining social distance.
A tourism executive said, “Right now, most of the demand for travel between India and the U.S. is for students and visiting relatives. People may postpone travel for a few weeks because of health advisories, and that may have a short-term impact on demand,”
A Virgin Atlantic spokeswoman said, “We are currently reviewing the schedule for our operations in India from April 23 and are advising customers booked with us to travel to or from India to check the status of their flights.” The airline operates five flights a week to Mumbai and Delhi.
India’s triple mutant virus, the king of viruses is here?
However, that’s not the scariest part! According to earlier reports, the mutated virus in India is a “double mutated” strain.
However, after only one month, it has already become a “triple mutation” …… After preliminary analysis by virus researchers in various countries, it has the characteristics of Brazil, South Africa and the UK mutant strain, which is really multiple sense suffocating! ……
As we all know, the existing British, Brazilian and South African variants are already such a headache for epidemiologists and doctors, what will the new Indian variant B.1.617 be like?
So far, it is the South African, Brazilian and British variants that have received the most attention. The Lancet, JAMA, NEJM, BMJ, and Science …… have all published articles on them, and the South African variant has a high immune escape capacity. The South African variant has gained more attention due to its high immune escape capacity, which can cause repeat infections in recovered patients, and reduced vaccine efficacy.
The chart below shows the performance of the three mutant strains against each vaccine published by NEJM, with B.1.1.7 being the UK variant, P.1 being the Brazilian variant, and 501Y.V2 being the most troublesome South African variant. As you can see, it was the only one that showed “complete immune escape”, and even if it did not show complete immune escape, its ability to reduce the effectiveness of the neutralizing antibody was significantly higher than that of the British and Brazilian variants.
The South African variant was statistically found to achieve up to 40% complete immune escape in the plasma of recovered patients, meaning that it had a 40% chance of re-infecting people who had already been infected and had neutralizing antibodies.
The South African 501Y.V2 quickly swept through the area of origin and adjacent areas in just one month, replacing the previously prevalent strain and infecting more people more rapidly than the original strain, with local polls stating that 501Y.V2 increased the rate of new infections by 50%, while its lethality likely increased the rate of inpatient deaths by 20%.
It could be argued that this virus is less lethal if it is more transmissible and less transmissible if it is more lethal – instead, it is not only more transmissible and more lethal, but also immune to escape to create repeated infections.
However, such a powerful South African virus can only be considered “small” in front of today’s Indian mutant virus! This can be seen from the explosive daily additions in India and the overwhelming variety of emergencies to see how strong the spread of this virus!
The following graph of the change in the share of strains in India in recent months shows that B.1.617 has been rapidly gaining “market share” in the recent past, coinciding in time with the recent outbreak in India.
The scarier thing is that as more and more people are infected with the new strain, new symptoms are suddenly appearing: diarrhea, abdominal pain, rash, conjunctivitis, confusion, and even bleeding from the nose and mouth…
These symptoms are even more severe than the previous ones!
In addition, patients in the new outbreak showed increased respiratory distress and a trend toward younger people with severe illness. These are enough to show that the new coronavirus is getting more and more powerful.
However, the relationship between these new changes and the variant virus cannot be fully determined yet because of the limitations of related studies.
Can vaccines outperform mutations in the face of variant viruses?
David Ho, a famous American virus researcher, pointed out in a recent academic report that the key to winning the battle between humans and the new crown lies in the race against the speed of the spread of the mutated strains and also the speed of the evolution of virus mutations.
In other words, if humans want to beat New Crown in one fell swoop, they need to cut off the spread of the mutant strain that can fight the vaccine as soon as possible before it spreads rapidly, making the vast majority of the population immune to the virus or adopting some scheme to eradicate the infection.
For example, while the vaccine is effective and the virus that can immunize against escape has not yet spread, so that the majority of people can form a true herd immunity through the vaccine, and the new crown virus cannot be transmitted and is naturally eliminated or contained to a very small and controllable extent.
However, if the vaccine is not fast enough, or can not be done in other ways so that the majority of people are not infected, there are individuals everywhere who may be infected with the virus and carry it around, the mutant strains have the conditions for widespread spread, and may further escalate and evolve in the process of widespread spread, becoming more difficult to deal with! For example, the current Indian mutant strain has upgraded infectivity, upgraded lethality and possible immune escape …… is likely to acquire new characteristics during transmission making vaccine development and clinical treatment more difficult.
This observation is what the WHO considers to be the key to preventing future mutations – cutting off transmission.
On an individual basis, all that can be done to cut off transmission is still the same methods we have heard for over a year: wash your hands regularly, be careful to keep social distance, wear a mask, don’t gather, etc. ……
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