COVID-19 will become a seasonal disease when the level of collective immunization reaches 80%, Deputy Director for Research of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Gorelov told RIA Novosti.
“If we can achieve herd immunity, the virus will change less, because it only mutates in a non-immune organism, while herd immunity is 80 percent,” he said.
According to him, the basic data on the coronavirus have already been obtained, but the virus is constantly changing and, as a result, requires additional study. So, with a mutation, COVID-19 acquires new properties, therefore, in many countries, including in Russia, the circulation of various genotypes, which are fundamentally different from each other, is constantly monitored, Gorelov explained.
Earlier, Rospotrebnadzor reported that a decrease in the number of deaths and an increase in the potential for the spread of coronavirus infection indicate the seasonality of the disease. “Apparently, it will continue in the future in the form of the integration of SARS-CoV-2 into the structure of seasonal pathogens of ARVI,” they said there.
Norwich Medical School professor Paul Hunter also spoke about the seasonality of the disease. According to him, vaccines will temporarily stop the spread of the virus, but soon their effectiveness will generally decline. However, at the same time, vaccinations will prevent severe illness and death. “There will never be herd immunity, but we will find a manageable balance between immunity and infections,” says the British professor.
The head of the Russian Ministry of Health, Mikhail Murashko, said earlier that 60% of the population would have enough collective immunity to stop the spread of the disease. According to the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova, now the level of collective immunity to coronavirus in the country is insufficient to stop the circulation of the virus.
According to the headquarters on August 17, 172,110 deaths have been registered in the country since the beginning of the pandemic. During the day, the disease COVID-19 was confirmed in 20,958 people, another 805 people died. At the same time, according to Rosstat, by July 316.7 thousand people with coronavirus had died in Russia.
