Dr. Petrovic: Coronavirus to strike hardest in mid-September, number of Covid patients is increasing

Photo: Tanjug/Zoran Zestic

This wave of the epidemic will last for at least another two months, very likely for longer, but it is in the second half of September that we will face a drastic increase in the number of those infected on a daily basis.

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"Hospitals will be full again, and more death outcomes are only ahead of us, because mortality in epidemics always increases with a delay," says Dr. Radmilo Petrovic.

From this perspective, without the data on the level of collective immunity, it is difficult, notes Dr. Radmilo Petrovic, to estimate what could represent the peak of this wave of coronavirus according to the number of infected people, Novosti.rs reports.

"We don't know how many vaccinated people are experiencing declining immunity and whether they will receive a booster dose, just as we don't know how much natural immunity has been acquired: how many of the 760,000 registered cases of infection have 'overlapped' with the vaccinated people, and how many more have resistance only after recovering from Covid. These are all parameters without which we cannot even guess whether we will reach 8,000 infected new daily cases again," says Dr. Petrovic.

It's an aggravating circumstance that the Delta strain breaks through both natural and post-vaccination protection. The day before yesterday, Serbia reached close to 3,000 newly infected people, although the most pessimistic forecasts at the beginning of this coronavirus wave said that at its peak we can expect up to 4,000 cases per day. The reality could, in fact, be worse.

"The fight against the Delta strain is extremely harsh and we expect the virus to show all its strength in the coming weeks. The pace of vaccination is extremely slow. With about 52 percent of the population vaccinated, we are far from acquiring collective immunity, and so we have extended the survival of the virus, which has now mutated. It's sad now to see young unvaccinated people on ventilators," says Dr. Mirsad Djerlek, the state secretary at the Ministry of Health.

There were 80 patients on mechanical ventilation machines on Tuesday, while 1,231 were hospitalized with Covid. According to doctors' estimates, based on the severity of the clinical picture that Covid patients now have, out of the 2,981 people who were confirmed to have the virus on Tuesday, at least 10 percent will have to undergo hospital treatment at some point.

Plans are already being made for creating additional capacities. According to Dr. Djerlek, the state is ready for a new wave of the virus: there is enough oxygen, drugs and hospital beds have been provided.

"With all the (newly) built capacities, we expect that the health system will function in parallel and that non-Covid patients will have better health care, as well as that they will not suffer as they did during the previous year and a half," said Djerlek.

Epidemiologists see salvation in vaccination

"It's obvious everywhere that the measures are not respected, that people are fed up and we are no exception to the rest of the world, there is just no reasonable explanation as to why we don't get vaccinated in large numbers when we have the vaccine. After two Chinese, I received the third dose of Sinopharm, I did not check for antibodies, because they are not the most valid measure of immunity. The vaccine that the Russians are announcing for next year will be better than the ones available now, because it will be administered in in the form of a spray: it will prevent infection because it will create antibodies in the nasal cavity and thus prevent the virus from penetrating the body," says Dr. Radmilo Petrovic.

(Telegraf.rs)