Siberian city amazed epidemiologists with coronavirus phenomenon
The authorities of the Siberian city of Sayansk abandoned strict quarantine, but in the end, an outbreak of COVID-19, despite forecasts, did not occur.
Komsomolskaya Pravda writes about this, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The publication draws attention to the fact that a month ago, the mayor of Sayansk, Oleg Borovsky, who decided not to close hairdressers and kindergartens, was considered a risky “Covid dissident” and was threatened with catastrophic consequences, but at the moment not a single case of coronavirus infection has been recorded in the city.
When asked to comment on the Sayan phenomenon, the chief epidemiologist of the Ministry of Health of the Irkutsk Region, Irina Lisyanskaya, answered the publication briefly: “This has no scientific explanation.”
According to the journalist, after this the doctor asked for time to prepare for a detailed answer and did not contact her again.
In turn, a well-known epidemiologist in Irkutsk, an employee of the Department of the Medical Academy of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Yuri Lysanov, admitted that the Sayansk phenomenon cannot yet be fully explained or understood.
He emphasized that there are several similar “anomalous” zones in the Irkutsk region.
“For example, the city of Shelekhov, where the Irkutsk aluminum plant is located. Due to hazardous production and weakened immunity, the growth of coronavirus was expected there. But it was there that he was not registered for a long time. Or one of the central districts of the region - Cheremkhovsky. For some reason there is no virus there either...” said the epidemiologist.
He does not believe that the mayor of Sayansk with his decisions can radically influence the epidemiological situation, especially since a quarter of the city uncontrollably travels to work in the region.
“The question here is rather about the detectability of the virus. Or in Sayansk, in fact, it exists, it just behaves, thanks to the young and strong population of the city, quietly - which I don’t really believe in,” says the doctor.
At the same time, he himself is more inclined to the second version.
“In January-February, we had a sharp increase in ARVI, schools were closed for quarantine. If we assume that the coronavirus was moving from east to west, it turns out that Siberia, which had already suffered from it (unlike the West of the country, where the coronavirus arrived later), now produces such statistics. Perhaps small, compact Sayansk received herd immunity in the spring. Lucky,” Lysanov does not rule out.
Siberian city stuns epidemiologists with coronavirus phenomenon