MOSCOW, August 26. /TASS/. The second wave of the coronavirus infection may cause a more severe course of the COVID-19 disease, among other things, due to the weakened immunity during self-isolation, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Center for Immunology and Molecular Biomedicine of the Moscow State University, professor Mikhail Paltsev said to the Telegram channel of the Russian anti-coronavirus internet hotline.
"There is no clear forecast on how the virus will behave yet, but I am confident that there will be a second wave and agree with the opinion on the severity of the illness, for one thing, because during the lengthy isolation people’s immunity has decreased. On the other hand, there is a sufficient number of people in the population who are not susceptible to the coronavirus, that is, they don’t get sick even if infected," the scientist said answering the question whether people who observed self-isolation and didn’t get sick in the spring, will have a more severe case of the disease in the fall.
According to the scientist, the novel coronavirus infection is likely to have three waves and it will be possible to return to the accustomed way of living only by the summer 2021.
The scientist added that it is possible to contract the coronavirus repeatedly. And there are patients with repeat infections both in France and in Russia, "although there are very few of them," he explained. "That said, it (the coronavirus) is actually mutating but in general only the protein receptors of its membrane are changing while the mutations that show that the coronavirus is becoming more aggressive haven’t been detected," he noted.
According to the latest statistics, over 24,000,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 823,000 deaths have been reported. To date, 970,865 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 786,150 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 16,683 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.