welcome back on viewpoint today we touch upon the latest developments with regard to covert
19. i have professor kim yu from yonsei university with me here in the studio professor kim it's good
to see you again thank you for having me right professor kim as always then perhaps you could
start with a few words about korea's current covet 19 situation yes we went through a few
outbreaks and now we passed the biggest one uh omicron outbreak and i think it started from
january in here korea and we reached the peak in mid march reaching about 8 000 cases per million
and now it declined to 190 per million and still declining it's a good news and there's a recent
report from our health authorities that they screen the antibody positive rates in
our population the total number is only about 1 1 600 so the number is not so big but strikingly
the antibody positive rate is 95 percent uh if it's all came from uh vaccination
it's good but actually the natural infection is about 36 percent so that means even though we
vaccinate our population some of them got infected by natural infection so i think
they're going to start an extensive study for uh antibody positive uh rate in our population
we believe that immunity against kevin 19 will sustain for at least six months to 12 months
but all this data came from the research about antibody titer but as we all know
we have t cells in our body and nobody can measure how t cell works how long they works
we have a very preliminary data of sars in 2003 and those patients who had that
infection still have some immunity against sars 2003 in their t-cells so actually we
don't we don't know how long we're going to have immunity against omicron some might be longer
so let's say if there's no more new variant i'm very optimistic uh but recently i got a uh uh
report i saw a report about uh pax levitt which is a medication fighting against uh 19 there is a
rebound of viruses after we stop this medication so anyway there might be a new variant
we still have to be vigilant for all these conditions right we still need to keep our
eye on it then and beyond korea professor kim moderna says it's booster targeting omicron
shows a stronger immune response than its original vaccine could you tell us a bit more about this
well uh all the products vaccine products are made against the original u1 strain
and modona they started to make a new one it works not only for the original u1 strain
but also for the uh omicron so actually that uh vaccine is uh composed of two components
each for uh one strain and the omega constraint so that's the reason why they call it bivalent
and this is not the first bible vaccine they developed this company is trying to improve it
every day and now it's on the phase 2 3 clinical trial the the total number of the cases are just
430 some cases so it's very small number i think they they need to go on further with a full-scale
phase 3 trial and if they have the same result with this preliminary data it's promising it's
going to work for the original strain and also for the omicron right so it's something we can look
forward to then professor kim according to data by the u.s centers for disease control and prevention
since late february boosted americans appear to test positive for covert 19 more often than
those who are vaccinated but not boosted could you explain this finding for us
it's a very complex uh question i mean we have to look at many things to
explain why so i would just give you some data they give out by the cdc in april they check
the unvaccinated group they take the check the to those vaccinated group and compared with the
boosted group so there are three groups the first one unvaccinated group was infected about
188 cases per 100 000 and to those vaccinations were filed as only 56 cases per 100 million but
strangely the group who was boosted uh so they got at least three shots was 120 was about two
times higher than the uh to those group so still vaccination is uh working and it's preventing
people from getting infections as we compare with unvaccinated group but why the booster
group having two times higher infection rate so i'm going to give you a four reasons but as
we have more reasons we have to tell that means nothing is quite for sure the first
one uh there might be some behavioral difference among those two short groups and booster group so
the people who got only two doses might have more careful about their behavior when they meet people
about hand washing or wearing masks
but the booster group might mingle with people they might they might have abandoned
those prevention behaviors so that's the second thing i can explain i mean omicron is different
from previous variants because they have a very very high reproduction number so
that's the second explanation the third one
the two of those group might already have infected with in some kind of uh variance
delta or omega so they decided not to have the third dose so we have to look at the data
so it's too early to make any judgments yeah yeah yeah and the third the fourth one
how do we confirm that the patient is kovind 19 positive if all the population is done by pcr
there's no argument but suddenly we started to include the data
collected by rapid antigen test and there's a quite difference
among those so uh even though you they say it's copy negative you don't know whether we
repeat it with pcr that patient might turn to be positive so what is the meaning of the
booster dose i still believe that those booster groups have benefits because we have a less
hospitalization and less death so compared to unvaccinated group so people need booster shots
especially people with underlying conditions right and moving forward professor kim some
health experts believe that cover 90 patients with weak immune systems need to receive priority care
because of the concern of new variants that you mentioned earlier what are your thoughts on this
now we have to remember that coronavirus is a rna virus and as long as the virus has a chance
to replicate it has a chance to mutate and i said that i wish that normal new variants will
emerge but uh that's not true it's gonna emerge in in in the future in the near
future or far future we don't know it but uh it's gonna emerge definitely
so healthy people have a strong immunity they don't let the virus to replicate for
a long time only for a limited time then we recover it so virus is cleaned out so
virus have a less chance to mutate but when the immune system is weak and compromised they need a
long time to fight against the virus and sometimes they fail so these viruses have a long time to
survive and they mutate it virus adenovirus cannot mutate outside human cells
so uh you don't have to worry about that so those immune compromised
patients need a special care so if you have a patient suffering from kopi 19 we need to confirm
that this patient is fully recovered and not giving out any new mutant new variant so health
professionals should be very careful when they treat those patients under weak immune systems and
the patients also have to follow the uh instructions given by the doctors
sometimes they say uh it's enough i don't want to have no more uh admission or yeah
stop taking medications but that's a very bad idea so it's a dangerous idea that yeah
professor kim sting also here on the local front on friday health authorities will
announce the fate of quarantine for covert 19 patients here in the country should the
quarantine be lifted or kept professor kim your personal views on that yes uh
coffee 19 is
has many many faces but just i want to focus on omicron overkill as as i mentioned has a very high
reproduction number and it's going to find out among the population who is not immune and if the
person is weak i mean elderly having underlying conditions this person is going to get omicron
sometime in the future even though they do their best so i do believe that we need some degree of
quality and it will be dependent upon the population immunity herd immunity and so we need
the results from a bigger size antibody test among koreans and that will decide the level of time
and some there are some special situations that need the minimum quality measures like
public transportations and nursing homes and especially a family who has a person
with high age or underlying conditions right i see all right i'm afraid that's all the
time we have for today professor kim as always thank you very much for your insights thank you