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Algis Džiugys, a member of the Council of Health Experts convened by the president and a physicist from the Energy Institute, said that despite the growing number of terrifying Covid-19 infections and overcrowded patients every day, he is still optimistic and naively hopes that the epidemic in Lithuania has reached its peak.
The portal tv3.lt presents a possible scenario for Lithuania presented by A. Džiugis and considerations on what to do next.
The second wave peak has been reached
“As has been written before, combat the number of daily infections is currently unreliable and we cannot reliably predict the course of the epidemic. However, if we consider hospitalization combat the number of patients is reliable enough, we can trust it.
The main hypothesis is that hospitalized combat patients and combat the number of patients requiring oxygen or pulmonary ventilation should depend on the total number of infections. Thus combat the dynamics of the number of patients (hospitalized) should reflect the dynamics of infections with some delay. The same can be said of patients who need oxygen (O2) devices, ”he explained.
When proposing to estimate the increase in hospitalizations and O2 (Fig. 1), the specialist pointed out that if it is greater than 1 the number of patients increases and if it is less than 1 the number of patients decreases.
“The green line shows the increase in hospitalizations (smoothed by a 15-day moving average) and the blue line shows the increase in the need for oxygen (O2) equipment. It is an analog of the reproductive number of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. deducted from hospitalized patients.
We see that since the end of October, when the mild quarantine was introduced, the increase in both hospitalized and O2 is relentlessly approaching unity, which means that the increase in the number of daily infections is also approaching unity.
Thus, combat the number of patients continues to rise, but growth is slowing. And the fact that the dynamics of hospital admissions lags behind the dynamics of everyday infections, it is very likely that we have already passed the first peak of this epidemic wave, or we are just passing it now, ”said A. Džiugys .
He noted that so far this is just a hypothesis and only the future will show if it is correct.
It may take another week or two for the epidemic to peak.
However, according to him, it is worrying that before the beginning of December, the fall in both hospitalized and O2 curves slowed down, indicating that new outbreaks of infection broke out in mid-November.
“It takes 35 to 42 days to silence a fireplace. So if these new hot spots are very strong or abundant, it can take a week or two for the epidemic to pass.
On the other hand, it is already clear that the quarantine is tightening, so we will have no choice but to go through that peak sooner or later. The effects of quarantine measures become fully apparent after two to three weeks.
Below is one of the possible daily infection scenarios for Lithuania.
A. Džiugys noted that the scenario was worked out two weeks ago, but it stands on the assumption that residents meet the current quarantine requirements fairly fairly. Furthermore, this scenario does not yet include the quarantine measures introduced by the new government.
A month later, a new wave awaits again
The data analyst emphasized that even if successful, even now, looking at the experience of other countries, it is clear that after suppressing this wave of the Covid-19 epidemic and releasing the quarantine, we will have another wave in a month.
“This is the case now in Israel, which was the first to quarantine the second wave in September and suppress it in October, and is currently beginning a fight against the third wave. In the Czech Republic, the second wave has also just been suppressed. But before the population can rest, the first signs of the third wave have already appeared.The Slovaks also have no reason to be happy about the victory against the second wave, not even mass tests have helped them.
We are not exclusive, so it is easy to predict that deletion crowns wave in Lithuania, already in late January – early February we can expect a new wave again. Will we re-plant the country in total quarantine?
It is not difficult to calculate that on such a scale of disease koroneWe will only acquire herd immunity after a few years, and this only on the condition that immunity to the SARS-Cov-2 virus persists for much more than a year. Humanity fought against the Spanish flu for two years and only the fact that immunity against the flu was greater than one year was saved, ”explained A. Džiugys.
Won’t you save yourself and get vaccinated?
Will vaccines save? The specialist hardly expects mass vaccination to begin in Lithuania in April or even May.
“The global vaccine production capacity is limited and the need for other vaccines (measles, …) has not been canceled. The newly built vaccine factories will not start operating by themselves, the specialists who attend them were not born in Indian villages and are not developed automatically from Lithuanian builders and administrators.According to current estimates, by 2021 only 2-4 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine will be available.
If 4 doses per person are needed in a year, only 0.5-1 billion people can be provided by the end of 2021. Knowing this and remembering the “solidarity” of the EU in the spring, it is hard to believe that Lithuania will be among the first to be vaccinated. Only to lose the war on vaccines (irony).
And what will we do by then? Quarantine for the whole country, release, and again quarantine for the whole country, and release again … How many quarantines of this kind are people determined to endure?
Perhaps take advantage of the experience of other countries, such as Japan: once and for all to endure and achieve no more infections in the country. And then, to start a normal life, angrily extinguishing any fireplace, completely isolating it and stubbornly tracing all the contacts of the infected throughout Lithuania. More recently, for example, the Japanese completely shut down the Osaka conglomerate when there were only a few hundred infections there. But then you don’t have to shut down the whole country, “he said.
It is proposed to use quarantine to strengthen prevention
On the other hand, according to A. Džiugis, this quarantine period is a good opportunity to prepare for next year’s wave:
“For example, humanity has so far not found anything better to combat such infections: personal hygiene, contact restrictions, masks and proper ventilation of facilities. We wash our hands, we breathe in masks, we avoid people. So what? about ventilation?
Already 100 years ago, during the Spanish flu pandemic, adequate indoor ventilation was found to be the best way to stop the spread of flu. A recent study has shown that the risk of infection in airplanes is low because the ventilation presses the air against the floor and, therefore, the droplets do not spread between people.
Perhaps in places where many people congregate at the same time and are close to each other (catering, education, sports and other similar establishments), it is worthwhile to fix their ventilation properly while they are not working. Yes covid there is still some money left in the fund, it is possible to go through schools and kindergartens and fix their ventilation properly.
It is possible to give money to a company so that (hairdressers, cafes, sports clubs, pubs, country stores, etc., etc.) can re-ventilate so that there is a risk of infection. The crown it would be minimal. These costs will not be wasted even after mass vaccination against crowns“Because this pandemic does not appear to be the last in this century,” he wrote, adding that this is just one example of what can be done during quarantine.
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