MOSCOW, June 18. /TASS/. Rising incidence of coronavirus infection in Russia, in particular in Moscow, may be caused by a new mutation of the virus. If it crowds out others, the regions will catch up with the capital in terms of the rate of spread of the disease, immunologist Vladislav Zhemchugov told TASS.
On Friday, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported that Russia recorded 17,262 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the highest daily number since February 1. More than half of those cases were recorded in Moscow, where a record high number of 9,056 infections was registered. The total case count in Russia has reached 5,281,309.
"The most important thing is to define what people are sick with. To make a sequence immediately, that is, to determine the sequence of nucleic acids and to understand how the new strain differs, whether it is really a Moscow one. If this is a completely new strain, then the second task is to see what people get sick with and if vaccinated people get sick as well," Zhemchugov told TASS on Friday.
If there are many sick people among those vaccinated, it will be necessary to update the composition of existing vaccines, he said. At the same time, according to the experts, it is now easy to change the drug.
The doctor assumes that the new strain is more infectious than the previous ones: if earlier one sick person infected an average of two people, now it is six to eight.
"If this strain spreads faster, the regions will inevitably catch up with Moscow in terms of morbidity," the expert added.