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Covid soars in China; relative safety for Lanka due to vaccines, says top scientist
View(s):- Prof. Malavige says “good’ surveillance is necessary to combat the virus
By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
Sri Lanka is not facing the same danger that China is undergoing with a huge wave of disease and death from COVID-19 because of vaccinations and natural immunity, said a top scientist on Friday.
“There may be confusion as to why this is happening in China, but not in Sri Lanka and elsewhere with the same variants. This is to do with vaccination and natural immunity. We have high vaccination rates among adults, and many adults have had the booster (third dose), while a majority of the people have also been naturally infected,” said Prof. Neelika Malavige, from the Immunology and Molecular Medicine Department at the Sri Jayewardenepura University. She is also Head of the Global Dengue Programme of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative.
According to her, the variants BA.5.2 and BF.7 rampaging in China and causing massive outbreaks there were detected in Sri Lanka last year. This was while some variants of the XBB series reported in America had also been found here last November.
Sequencing to determine whether the specific ‘fastest’ spreading XBB.1.5 in America was also in Sri Lanka would be conducted by Prof. Malavige’s team next week.
“We need to understand that it is likely to be here, if it is in other countries. Hopefully, an important lesson that everyone has learnt is that viruses cannot be kept out of countries in this day and age,” she added.
Referring to the immunity Sri Lankans had acquired, she said the three vaccine doses and a natural infection (hybrid immunity) gave “pretty good” immunity and effectively prevented severe disease and hospitalisation, while also reducing transmission to a certain extent.
In contrast, in China, many have had only two doses of an inactivated vaccine, with a significant proportion of the elderly being unvaccinated. It was only recently that they had begun giving the booster doses, while only a minority of the people had been naturally infected, said Prof. Malavige.
“Even though these new sub-variants (BA.5.2 and BF.7) of the Omicron strain did not cause large outbreaks in our countries, when they hit a country with a poor level of immunity, there will be a massive outbreak. So what is happening in China is not a surprise. This is why, the international media is saying that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire there,” she said.
Recently released sequencing data, shows the China’s outbreaks being led by BA.5.2, with BF.7 following hot on its heels.
Pointing out that Sri Lanka had BA.5.2 in June to August last year, after which the BF series had emerged, she said the XBB variant series emerged in Sri Lanka last November. Therefore, this country has had these variants for a while. These variants had also been circulating in many countries for some time without causing massive outbreaks as seen in China.
With regard to the profiles of these variants, Prof. Malavige said:
n BA.5.2 was the “fastest” spreading variant in China, but there were faster spreading variants elsewhere in the world including Sri Lanka. This was how BA.5.2, which Sri Lanka had in the past, had been displaced by other variants, in keeping with nature’s law of ‘survival of the fittest’. As such, there were ‘fitter’ variants than BA.5.2 in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the world.
n The Omicron offshoot XBB.1.5 reported in America was currently the fastest spreading variant in the XBB series.
She urged “good” surveillance to combat the scourge of COVID-19 which had been around since 2019. She said SARS-CoV-2 would continue to mutate and evolve and it would give rise to new variants. Due to climate change, deforestation, rapid urbanisation and travel, there was also a threat of new viruses or new variants of influenza and coronaviruses emerging causing future pandemics, she added.
| COVID symptoms still the same; stay home if you feel unwell Referring to the variants which are causing serious concern across the world, Consultant Physician Dr. Ananda Wijewickrama of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) in Angoda, said there has been no big impact yet in Sri Lanka. However, it is good to be safe rather than sorry later. “If you have flu-like symptoms, it could mean you may have got COVID-19. It is advisable to stay at home and even there, away from family members. It would not be good to move around as you could spread the infection,” he says. If, however, a person had to go to work or to attend to some urgent matter, he/she should wear a facemask and resort to hand-hygiene. For those who were not ill, protective measures would be to wear face masks and practise hand hygiene in crowded places, he added. Dispelling misconceptions that symptoms had changed, Dr. Wijewickrama said COVID-19 symptoms were the same. They included fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, body aches and pains and fatigue. | |
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