Professor-Infectionist: Up To 10% Of Belarusians Could Have Been Sick With COVID-19

The statements of the professor at the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Belarusian State Medical University contradict the experience of foreign scientists.

In Belarus, up to 10% of the population has already been ill with coronavirus.

Professor Siarhei Zhavaranak from the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Belarusian State Medical University told about this in an interview with the propagandist newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussia, Euroradio reports.

“This is very little: to stop the epidemic, you need to reach 80% or to develop immunity with the help of a vaccine,” the professor said.

According to official data, more than 2.2 million tests were done in Belarus, 88.2 thousand cases of coronavirus were detected. Only confirmed cases are included in the statistics of the Ministry of Health. If the professor is right, about 900 thousand people have already suffered the disease in Belarus, but tests revealed only one in ten of them.

The physician noted that the virus persists better in cold and wet weather, so the number of patients is growing faster than in summer. You need to be very careful about safety: keep your distance, use masks:

- Some people for some reason believe that we do not have this disease here, it is somewhere out there, far away. This big mistake can lead to serious consequences.

According to Zhavaranak, antibodies always appear after illness.

- They persist for a long time. I believe at least five years, - says the professor. And he adds that it is almost impossible to get the coronavirus again.

These assumptions contradict the experience of foreign scientists. King's College London, for example, found that coronavirus antibodies were rapidly declining. Scientists from Germany, Japan and other countries came to the same conclusion. For some of those who have suffered from the disease, antibodies disappear after some time.