- 4 Sep 2015
- 2,306
- 1,906
This site I just came across:
A research team led by the University of Tokyo expressed its view that the coronavirus's omicron subvariant BA.5 spreading across Japan "tends to proliferate more in the lungs than the BA.2 strain, which is currently mainstream, and may be highly pathogenic as well as infectious, based on experiments using human cells and animals." According to sources including the preprint version of the paper published by the research team in May, it was confirmed in an experiment using epithelial cells of "alveoli" inside the human lung that the BA.5 subvariant increased 18.3 times more than BA.2 strain.
I got nailed these past couple weeks. First symptoms were 6/24. Definitely one of the omicron strains. Probably BA.5 based on the numbers here. BA.2 would be the second likely choice. Finally tested negative with a home test this morning after two weeks. Still have a dry cough.This week and last, many Coronavirus cases popped up among friends, colleagues, and clients. It appears to be BA.5 strain.
Medical engineering professor Akimasa Hirata arrived at the estimate using artificial intelligence. Assuming that the currently dominant BA.2 strain is almost completely replaced with BA.5 by August, and that the new subvariant is 1.2 times more transmissible than BA.2, the simulation also estimated that daily infections will hover above 10,000 until late September. The results furthermore project that the daily case count in Tokyo will be under the peak of the sixth wave, which started around the beginning of this year and hit a high of 18,562 infections a day in the weekly average in early February. Progress on the administration of third coronavirus vaccine shots apparently helped keep the projected infections lower. The average number of deaths is expected to hover around one per day among patients younger than 65. While the figure for people aged 65 or older is expected to surpass 20 per day in September, the simulation projected a decrease of a few deaths per day if people get a fourth vaccine shot.
For its part, the Tokyo metropolitan government raised the capital's COVID-19 alert to the highest of four levels. Driven by the highly-transmissible BA.5 Omicron subvariant, Japan reported a day earlier a total of 94,493 new COVID-19 cases, approaching the peak of some 104,000 daily cases the country saw in February.
At least I'm at my mother's house, which has a nice garden, rather than a hotel room.OMG, @Lothor, I am so sorry to hear that! Please get better soon and enjoy the rest of your stay. Coincidentally, one of my students went to the UK to take an exam and contracted Covid. She's now holding out in a Heathrow hotel.
That's incredible your family has managed not to get it all this time.We had the first case in the family, my sister-in-law. Lots of other people around us got infected. As mild as it seems, it's definitely encroaching.
It's generally not bad at all for most people now. The biggest question in my mind is the risk of long covid. A mild case of Covid doesn't seem to mean long covid is not possible. So nobody really knows at this point.I've got Covid at the moment and have had a bad cough, sore throat, headache and an inability to concentrate. However, I am able to get up and look after myself. So, the current variant seems to be not particularly harmful.
That's incredible your family has managed not to get it all this time. It's generally not bad at all for most people now. The biggest question in my mind is the risk of long covid. A mild case of Covid doesn't seem to mean long covid is not possible. So nobody really knows at this point.
An unprecedented 152,536 cases were reported July 20, with daily records shattered in 30 of the nation's 47 prefectures. Five prefectures reported that more than half of their hospital beds set aside for COVID-19 patients were already filled as of July 19. [...] Many hospitals are already struggling with chronic staff shortages, and there have been cases of doctors and nurses becoming infected with COVID-19. Some hospitals were forced to shut down certain specializations, including emergency care. In Okinawa, 939 medical care staff could not report to work on July 20 because they were confirmed infected or had come in close contact with someone who was infected. Yokohama Rosai Hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture, just west of Tokyo, could face a similar situation in a matter of days. Of the 1,000 or so doctors and nurses at the hospital, about 40 are unable to show up to work. According to Tomoki Nakamori, who heads the hospital's emergency center, restrictions might have to be placed on accepting emergency patients if the staff shortage gets any worse. The sharp increase in COVID-19 patients has forced the hospital to temporarily close some sections and turn those beds over to infected patients. The 10 beds originally set up exclusively for COVID-19 cases are now filled by patients aged between 75 and 95. The hospital is moving to set up an additional 22 beds for COVID-19 patients.
The new measure is aimed at minimizing the impact of the spike in infections on social and economic activities as a growing number of medical professionals are missing work to self-isolate after coming into close contact with infected individuals. Close contacts are currently being asked to self-quarantine at home or other accommodation facilities for seven days, in principle. They can freely go outside on the fifth day after testing negative for the virus with antigen test kits for two days in a row from the fourth day. The government also shortened their self-isolation period to three days on condition that their test results come back negative on the second and third days.