The Minister of Health spoke today in a press conference about the 6th wave of the Coronavirus, which has already started in Romania, and which is dominated by the Omicron strain, but the BA.5 substrain is the one he brings to attention, because it it generates reinfections even in Romanians who have been vaccinated, or who have been through the disease, in large numbers.
The Minister of Health expects two possible developments of wave 6, with a peak of 30.000 cases per week in mid-August, or 70.000 daily cases at the end of the same month, or the beginning of September, stating at the same time that for the time being it is believed that the variant BA.5 would have a higher pathogenicity, although it would be more contagious.
"Reinfections with the BA.5 variant are frequent, including for people who have gone through the disease with the Omicron variant, so with another subvariant. You have seen that including us in the last 90 days, a proportion of about 20% of reinfections was recorded.
Considering that at least 5 months have passed since the 5th wave, that is in January - February, and most of those vaccinated with 3 doses are at least 6 months after the vaccination, it is clear that there is an evasion of the immune response, and practically this the Omicron subvariant, BA.5, produces infections both in vaccinated people and in those who have passed through the disease, so we estimate an increase in the next period, without having the possibility of an extremely rigorous prediction.
We have 2 scenarios that we present, the one that is figured in a kind of cream, in which the peak of this mini-wave, or wave, we will see depending on the number of cases, will be somewhere between August 7-10. The second option, less optimistic, in which the peak of wave 6 will be towards the end of August, the beginning of September, with a weekly total of about 70.000 cases, that is, 10.000 cases per day.
It remains to be seen if these things will be confirmed in this way. From what I have read for other countries, the assumption is that the peak of wave 6 in Europe will be somewhere at the end of July. We have a gap of 2 weeks compared to the rest of the European Union, and for this reason, probably a reasonable scenario could be between August 14-21, but I repeat, these are purely informative data.
They do not represent any kind of commitment, because no one can know exactly what is happening. We are discussing a very variable virus whose main characteristic over the past year has been the change in transmissibility, fortunately with the decrease in pathogenicity, and we hope that this will be confirmed in the next period as well."
