BREAKING COVID-19 News: Russia Witnessing A Surge In COVID-19 Cases But It Is Not JN.1 That Is Driving It!
Nikhil Prasad Fact checked by:Thailand Medical News Team Feb 01, 2024 10 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 8 hours, 27 minutes ago
COVID-19 News: While the world is at presently more focused on the JN.1 variant and its spawns that are driving COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations globally, some thing else is quietly brewing in Russia in terms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolution that could have consequences on the rest of the world.
Russia Witnessing A Surge In COVID-19 Cases
COVID-19 cases have been quietly rising in various parts of Russia with rising hospitalizations. However genomic sequencing was not done that extensively in Russia and in some cases, Russian does not share all genomic data.
Many assumed that it was the JN.1 variant that was driving COVID-19 infections in Russia as in the case of various countries across the world.
Local
COVID-19 News coverages have for while shown that COVID-19 cases hospitalizations and deaths have been increasing despite stringent controls by the Russian authorities to downplay the unfolding crisis in the country.
In an earlier media report in mid-January 2024, reporters were warning about COVID-19 infections rising in St. Petersburg ad that worryingly hospitals were becoming overstretched with the rising caseloads.
https://www.interfax-russia.ru/northwest/main/sutochnaya-zabolevaemost-covid-19-v-peterburge-vnov-nachala-rasti
In the latest media coverages two day ago, it was reported that over the span of a week, more than 6,500 individuals in Moscow contracted COVID-19! Among them, 585 required hospitalizations, while 5,134 successfully recovered. Unfortunately, 18 patients succumbed to the virus during this period. Comparatively, the preceding week, January 15 to 21, saw 5,066 new cases, marking an increase of 1,439 cases.
https://www.interfax-russia.ru/moscow/news/bolee-6-5-tys-chelovek-zaboleli-covid-19-v-moskve-za-nedelyu
The COVID-19 crisis in Russia started unfolding in mid-December 2023 when Thailand
Medical News was alerted to rising cases nationwide in Russia.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-news-russia-reports-107,174-new-sars-cov-2-infections-mostly-driven-by-jn-1,-9451-hospitalizations,-148-deaths-for-epi-week-49
What is interesting is that unknown to most people, the COVID-19 surge in Russia is not driven by the JN.1 variant but rather by an XBB variant that has possible mutated in a peculiar manner.
Speculations are that a XBB.1.16.11 sub-lineage with a possible G20055A reversion is at play in Russia.
Reverse mutation,
known as reversion, refers to any genetic process or mutation that reverts cells with a phenotype-altering forward mutation back to their original wild-type phenotype.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780123749840013255
This new SARS-CoV-2 sub-lineage also spots a spike mutation A701V.
This sub-lineage was identified more than 3 weeks ago from sequences uploaded from Vologda but as we know that Russia delays uploading sequences and also it does not load all the sequences into global sharing platforms like GISAID, we are not getting a realistic situation of the time of its emergence and its spread.
Despite an increase in the number of sequences etc, this new sub-lineage has not been designated a name yet as possibly because the teams involved are more preoccupied trying to get more media coverages for themselves or are busy with that reporter from Fortune!
In fact, nothing on it has been updated.
https://github.com/sars-cov-2-variants/lineage-proposals/issues/1284
Thailand
Medical News, the “the gossipy medical news tabloid that loves to exaggerate” as termed by some of these variant hunters will be providing more updates as we get more data on this new sub-lineage and also as to what is brewing in Russia. (While we can be termed as whatever..remember before these young arrogant and rude European and American variant hunters came into the scene..we were already a year before their set up ie we already in early 2020 warning about SARS-CoV-2 mutating and the possible emergence of new serious variants while many arrogant virologists then were insisting that SARS-CoV-2 was not mutating or that if it does, it will simply die off!) It also reflects the racialistic nature of some of these European based variant hunters as they make comments about us but when a white female writer from a garbage American business magazine write garbage, they end up praising and rimming her!
For the latest
COVID-19 News, keep on logging to Thailand Medical News.
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