The Associated Press revealed that the spread of new strains of the Corona virus has accelerated in many European countries, amid warnings and calls for caution and caution, to stop its spread.
According to the agency, in Italy, the Corona virus has invaded a nursery and an elementary school nearby, in the suburb of Polatti, Milan, at an amazing speed. Within a few days, 45 children and 14 employees tested positive.
Genetic analysis confirmed what officials had already suspected, that the new strain of the highly contagious virus, which was first identified in Britain, was spreading at a high speed.
In this regard, the mayor of Polati, Francesco Vasalo, said: “This is evidence that this type of virus has some kind of intelligence, even if it is a unicellular organism. With her and penetrate her. “
Polati was the first region in Lombardy, the northern region that was the epicenter of the virus in the past, that was isolated from the rest of the regions due to the mutated strains, which the World Health Organization says is the reason for the increase in the number of infections in Europe.
The fast-spreading strains also include the two that were first identified in South Africa and Brazil. The World Health Organization said on Thursday that Europe recorded one million new cases of corona last week, an increase of 9 percent from the previous week.
For his part, Dr. Hans Kluge, Director of the WHO Regional Office in Europe, said, “The spread of new strains is the reason behind the increase in infection cases, but it is not the only reason,” indicating that one of the other reasons is due to easing isolation measures “in an unsafe or Uncensored”.
The so-called British strain is widespread in 27 European countries monitored by the World Health Organization, and it prevails in at least 10 countries, according to agency statistics, which are Britain, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Spain and Portugal.
WHO experts have warned that the mutated virus is transmissible up to 50% faster than the virus that spread last spring and again in the fall, making it more adept at thwarting measures that were previously effective.
Health officials said this week in Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of the spring wave in Italy, that hospital intensive care wards are filling up again, as more than two-thirds of the new positive tests are of the British type.
After two provinces and nearly 50 towns eased lockdown measures, the governor of Lombardy region announced tightening restrictions on Friday and closing schools. The provincial health official said cases in Milan schools alone had risen 33 percent within a week.
In the Czech Republic, a daily record of about 8,500 people with corona was recorded in hospitals this week. Poland is opening temporary hospitals and is in the process of imposing a partial closure, as the number of people infected with the new strain has increased from 10 percent of all infections last February to 25 percent now.
And in Britain, the emergence of the more transmissible strain led to a spike in cases in December and triggered a national lockdown in January. Cases have since decreased from about 60,000 a day, at a peak in early January, to around 7,000 a day.
In France, the British dynasty is the dominant one, which led to the closure of the French city of Nice and the northern port of Dunkirk, and the South African strain appeared, as the most prevalent, in the Moselle region bordering Germany and Luxembourg, and it represents 55% of the virus circulating there.
The South African subspecies also dominates the region of Austria, which extends from Italy to Germany, as Austrian officials announced plans to vaccinate most of that region’s 84,000 people, to limit its spread. Austria is also requiring motorists along the Brenner motorway, a major truck route between north and south, to present negative test results.
The South African strain, now found in 26 European countries, is of particular concern due to doubts about whether the current vaccines are fully effective against it.
The World Health Organization and its partners are working to strengthen the genetic surveillance needed to track variants across the continent.
Source: Associated Press
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