Recently, the epidemic has resurfaced in Taiwan, with the number of confirmed cases reaching over 100 for a week. Although the British variant of the virus has been detected, no signs of the Indian variant have been reported. However, recently in the United Kingdom, mainland China, Japan, Singapore have appeared a new branch of the Indian variant of B.1.617.2, experts believe that it may have a variety of characteristics: 1. more infectious; 2. vaccinated people can also be infected; 3. children are more likely to be infected; 4. higher mortality rate. Experts speculate that it may be the culprit of the recent sudden increase in the outbreak in Asian countries such as Seychelles, Singapore, Vietnam and Japan, and that Asian countries should pay special attention to the importation of this super virus and stricter protective measures.
According to recent data released by the UK Public Health Agency, the number of cases of the Indian variant of virus B.1.617 has risen from 520 to 1,313 within a week after the detection of a new mutated branch of B.1.617.2 in the UK. “It is almost certain that vaccines are less effective in preventing the spread of this variant of the virus,” according to Professor Haddon of Oxford University, vice chairman of the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization. While B.1.617.2 was first discovered in India, it is likely to be one of the main causes of the 2nd wave of the outbreak in India.
The mainland has also recently seen a group of imported confirmed cases that made experts wonder, they are 5 experts who returned home after going to Vietnam from the mainland, all 5 of them were confirmed, one of them had severe respiratory difficulties. The official microblog of “Chang’an Street” quoted Guangxi epidemic prevention department as saying that the five experts were infected with the Indian variant B.1.617.2, which was traced to the mainland experts after being infected by the Indian experts to the hotel attendants in the isolation hotel.
What is suspicious is that the five mainland experts, according to the current situation, must have received two doses of vaccination before leaving the country, and to confirm that antibodies have been generated before leaving the country, and the journey also in accordance with the norms of due protection measures, the isolation after returning home is also strictly enforced. If 5 people are infected, there may be other factors, but now all 5 people are infected, and there is further human-to-human transmission, it is possible that the infectious ability of the mutated strain has increased significantly, and even the general vaccine and known protective measures can not stop it, which is quite worrying.
The case of the variant virus penetrating the vaccine protection also appeared last month on an Indian-American epidemiologist Kapila (Rajendra Kapila), who had received two doses of Pfizer vaccine and taken strict protective measures before going to India to visit his family, but finally became infected and died.
As for other vaccines, such as the inactivated Continental Coxin vaccine and the British AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine, the situation in the Indian Ocean island of Sehir, which has recently caused some controversy, can be analyzed. With a population of only 90,000, 72.6% of the population of Seychelles has received at least one dose of the vaccine and 63.9% of the population is fully vaccinated, but recently published information on the outbreak found that 37% of the new cases had been fully vaccinated, raising suspicions that the proportion of vaccine escape is quite high.
The situation found in Japan is even more worrisome. Official Japanese statistics through mid-May show that Japan has a cumulative total of 666,000 confirmed cases and 11,000 cumulative deaths. Among them, Tokyo and Osaka are the most serious, and a state of emergency has been declared, and there is a sudden increase in mortality. On May 5, for example, the death rate per million people in Osaka was 19.6, higher than the 15.5 in India, 16.2 in Mexico, and 14.5 in the United States. As a result, hospital beds in Osaka were in short supply, with the utilization rate of critical care beds reaching 99%, and 18 people even died because they were not hospitalized in time.
In Taiwan, there have been 200 to 300 confirmed cases on consecutive days recently, and there have been three deaths, which is also much higher than the previous mortality rate. In addition, studies in Singapore have shown that the variant strain of the Indian disease seems to have a greater impact on children and is easily transmitted among them, so Singapore has announced that schools at all levels will switch to home schooling from May 19.
The WHO warned on the 12th of this month that the Indian variant of the virus had spread to 44 countries worldwide, with India’s neighboring country Nepal seeing a 137% increase in confirmed cases last week compared to the previous week, Laos seeing a 200-fold increase in confirmed cases in a month, and Thailand seeing 98% of all new cases of the Indian variant of the virus recently. As for China, after the initial discovery of the Indian variant strain in Zhejiang, the strain is now also present in Guangxi, Chongqing and Anhui. On this basis, it is assumed that it is only a matter of time before the strain is imported into Taiwan, or it may even be an “already happened but not yet discovered” event.
In particular, the possibility of vaccine escape or penetration of existing protective measures by the Indian variant of the virus is a major concern. Not enough research has been done on the Indian variant, and if masks, goggles, protective clothing and gloves plus nucleic acid testing are not enough to protect against this virus, that would be the most serious challenge of all.
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