“The incidence, of course, is lower than in Europe and the USA, but not the same as it is in statistics, because, of course, the peculiarity of this disease is different from what it was,” RIA Novosti quotes the specialist.
As explained by the deputy president of the RAO, “Omicron”-strain, in comparison with previous versions of the coronavirus, causes a more gentle course of the disease, although it is more contagious.
Onishchenko noted that in the USA, where there is currently a very high incidence, the new strain came earlier, and the holidays ended on January 2, that is, Americans were the first to go to work and began to get infected.
“We have a head start, we have just started work, a timely instruction has been given to develop measures. If we now make it so that our collective immunity is not 63%, but we bring it to at least 70% by convincing the nation to vaccinate and revaccinate, then this will reduce [the incidence],” the academician said.
Earlier this day, the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (FMBA) Veronika Skvortsova reported that the proportion of patients with the Omicron coronavirus strain among those studied by the agency is 76% of the total number of COVID-19 cases.
At the same time, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said that in In Russia, 698 cases of the “Omicron” strain were detected, most of them were recorded in the Moscow region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that during the holidays, Russians often went abroad. Citizens of the Russian Federation visited, among other things, regions with a complex epidemic, which is why the country’s authorities should be prepared for an increase in the number of cases. A large number of cases of coronavirus infection have been recorded in the United States and European countries, the virus does not leave the world alone, the head of state said.