The UK Health Security Agency has announced that it is monitoring two new strains of coronavirus in the country.
The UK Health Security Agency announced on Friday (10/28) that it is monitoring two new types of coronavirus in the country.
BQ.1 and XBB which originated from micra and are not yet ‘variants of concern’ but are being monitored due to growth in cases and the potential for further immune escape relative to previous vaccine defenses or infection.
The country has already registered 717 cases of BQ.1, but there is no information on its transmissibility or lethality.
XBB, in turn, is a recombinant variant that emerged from two submicron lines and has been called a “nightmare variant” because it is linked to the recent increase in cases in Singapore. In the UK, 18 XBB-compatible samples were sequenced.
The Importance of Vaccination
The director of Clinical and Emerging Infections of the British Health Agency, Mira Chand, stressed that vaccination remains the best strategy to prevent Covid-19 and stressed that the appearance of the two new types should not be feared by the population.
“It is not unexpected that new variants of Sars-CoV-2 are emerging. Neither BQ.1 nor XBB have been identified as variants of concern. We are monitoring the situation closely as usual. It remains very important that people take all doses to which they are eligible as quickly as possible. maybe.”
Epidemic Situation
At the height of the epidemic, Brazil registered 286,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a single day. The death record was set on April 8, 2021: 4,249 deaths.
However, now, in October 2022, the situation is under control in the country. After the vaccine, cases and deaths fell sharply, and transmission rates remained below one, indicating that the spread of the virus is not increasing and that a dangerous new variant like Micron hasn’t appeared in months.
On September 14, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the world was never near the end of the pandemic. The entity considers the goal closed, but it is necessary to give one last gas.
The decrease in vaccination coverage in some African countries, the slight increase in registered cases in Europe and the possibility of paralyzing many programs to promote immunization and treatment research are some of the reasons why the organization has resisted the decision to end the pandemic.
