20. 12. 2021
reading time 5 minutes
Update, Monday morning: 12 people have died of omicron in Britain so far. 104 people are hospitalized with omicron.
Britain: 85 hospitalizations per omicron. 7 deaths per omicron. Typically, these people were infected 17 days ago. Seventeen days ago, compared to today, the number of omicron infections was only 1 percent of today’s. It’s not a nice trajectory.
– 85 omicron hospitalizations
– 7 omicron deaths
Typically hospitalisations were infected 17 days ago.
17 days ago Omicron infections were 1% of where they are today.
It’s not a pretty trajectory.
— Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) December 19, 2021
Evidence of the omicron’s potential to wreak havoc is accumulating at a dizzying rate as the variant appeared less than a month ago. The studies that emerged are quick first shots, but their message is now loud and clear: the scientific arguments for further quarantine restrictions are overwhelming. Without tough and rapid measures to reduce the infection, there is a risk of health breakdown, says the weekly Observer.
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The first red flag appeared in late November, when scientists in South Africa shared the first genomes of the so-called omicron. Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, pointed out “terrible” mutations, a rapidly spreading variant that is dangerous for vaccination, soon after they were published.
The alert prompted ongoing research to determine the extent of the threat. Dr. Alex Sigal of KwaZulu-Natal University in Durban was one of the first to report. His team confirmed that omicron is largely leaking antibodies from vaccines or past infections, with Pfizer vaccine antibodies being 41 times less effective against omicron than against the original dovid-19 virus. Other data from South Africa and soon around the world have shown that omicron is spreading like wildfire and that the number of diseases is doubling every two to three days. Professor Chris Whitty, the UK’s chief medical officer, put it this way: “There are a few things we don’t know, but all the things we know are wrong.”
As the disease spread, the UK Health Service initially found that two doses of the covid vaccine did little to prevent symptomatic infection, although a booster dose increased protection to about 70%. Two reports from Professor Neil Ferguson’s group at Imperial College added to the picture on Friday. Their findings are preliminary, but suggest that the booster vaccine provides 80-86% protection against hospitalization due to omicron disease. This is good from an individual point of view, but compared to 95% in the delta, it is worse. As a result, hospitalization rates for those vaccinated with the third booster vaccine could be four times higher for omicron.
Another analysis by the Imperial College team shed light on one important unknown: how serious can omicron infections be? Data from South Africa give some hope as the number of hospitalizations has decreased compared to previous waves, but researchers have found no evidence that omicron is milder than delta.
However, there are still signs of good news. Laboratory work led by Professor Ravi Gupta of Cambridge University suggests that omicron may be less effective in lung attacks than delta. This finding is consistent with research at the University of Hong Kong, which found that omicron replicates 70 times faster in the bronchi than older variants, but is less likely to infect the lungs directly. We hope that thanks to this, this variant could spread quickly, but cause less serious diseases.
However, in documents released by Britain’s Sage government science committee on Saturday – after learning about updated epidemic modeling from the University of Warwick and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – the assessment is sincere. In England, 1,000 to 2,000 people are “highly likely” to be hospitalized daily by the end of December. Many of them are already infected and will arrive in hospitals next week or later, regardless of the measures taken now. With no further restrictions beyond “Plan B”, the models point to at least 3,000 daily hospitalizations at the peak of the wave next month. “To prevent such a wave of hospitalizations, more stringent measures would have to be put in place by 2022,” the researchers wrote. This would prevent hospitalizations, not just delay them, as it would allow more time for the effects of booster vaccines to show.
During the epidemic, researchers stressed the importance of acting quickly before cases spread. According to an evaluation published by the environmental modeling and behavioral sciences involved in Sage’s work, this is doubly true of a virus that spreads as fast as omicron. If they are adopted early enough – within a few days – the restrictions may not last longer than a few weeks, experts write.
“The timing of such measures is crucial,” they added.
Portraits in English HERE
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