The incidence of COVID in St. Petersburg increased by 8 times in three weeks

The incidence of coronavirus in St. Petersburg has returned to the levels of March this year. According to the Federal Operational Headquarters for Combating Covid, 2,642 cases of infection were detected in St. Petersburg over the past day, this is the maximum since the beginning of spring. The number of detected cases of COVID-19 has been growing in the city since July 15 (329 new cases were recorded in the city that day).

Last week, the St. Petersburg Health Committee deployed all the beds for the reception of infectious patients in the transforming building of the Hospital for War Veterans, and also redesigned the Nikolaev Hospital for covid. To do this, it was necessary to redistribute patients with chronic renal failure to other medical organizations in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, which have outpatient dialysis departments. In total, 2,142 beds for patients with coronavirus and pneumonia have been deployed in the city.

Experts attribute the rise in incidence to the arrival in Russia of omicron variants, the infectivity of which is comparable to measles and chickenpox. At the same time, the new strains are less pathogenic, which means that the disease is milder in patients (specialists refer to the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths from “covid”). With a high increase in the incidence, the indicators of the severe course of "covid" change slightly. According to the infectious disease doctor Nikolai Malyshev, the incidence will increase in Russia until the end of August, and in September it will begin to decline.

At the same time, the government of the Russian Federation considers the situation with the spread of coronavirus alarming and allows the return of "anticoid" restrictions (recall that all the relevant bans were lifted by Rospotrebnadzor on July 1). By August, the incidence in the country had increased 6 times, and collective immunity had significantly decreased (in St. Petersburg today it is estimated at 12.7%). In mid-July, Dmitry Motovilov, deputy chairman of the Committee for Health of St. Petersburg, announced a “catastrophic” decrease in herd immunity from coronavirus below 30%, while at its peak these figures exceeded 80%. Motovilov attributes this to the low number of revaccinations. According to him, a little more than 10% of the total number of initially vaccinated citizens applied for re-vaccination against COVID.