A new study from Hong Kong indicates that the omicron attaches to the nose and throat and does not go down into the lungs as much. This is good news, says the vaccine expert.
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– The study indicates that omicron is transmitted very easily but perhaps gives less serious disease because it stays higher in the respiratory tract such as nose and throat, explains immunologist and professor Anne Spurkland at the University of Oslo to VG.
She has read the press releases where the study is mentioned as Wednesday came from a research group at the University of Hong Kong. What they have done is to grow cells from the airways of humans in cell cultures in the laboratory and see how the cells react to the different virus variants such as wuhan, delta and omicron.
– Then they conclude that the omicron performs better in the cells from the upper respiratory tract. The virus is copied more there so there are larger amounts of viruses.
Because omikron especially likes to multiply in the nose and throat, it can thus be more easily infected than if it quickly pulls down to the lungs, Spurkland believes.
–More positive signals
Specifically, the study shows that omicron copies 70 times faster than delta and other variants in tissue samples from the trachea, and infection here is not the same as pneumonia.
Similarly, omicron copies 10 times slower in cells from the lungs compared to the original Wuhan virus.
– This may indicate that the omicron to a lesser extent gets further into the lungs where there is a stage for pneumonia. That is the good news and that may fit with the impression from other signals from South Africa, says Spurkland.
The researchers from the Hong Kong study comment that high infectivity can cause many patients, even if the severity is lower.
A study from South Africa’s largest private health fund, Discovery, supports the hypothesis that omicron is more contagious and causes less serious disease. They write that the risk of hospitalization has been reduced by 29 percent and 80 percent applies to deaths.
In terms of vaccine effect, British figures show that they also have an effect against the omicron variant. The effect was lower than against delta, something that was expected. But a booster dose provides 76 percent protection against omicron disease.
– These are positive signals that the vaccines also protect against infection with omicron. That a booster dose gives 76 percent against symptomatic disease is also very optimistic, he said vaccine manager Geir Bukholm in FHI to VG about the British study.
The delta variant is also less eager to infect lung cells. If omikron is even less interested in pulling down to the lungs and likes better in the nose and throat, there may be less pneumonia of the coronavirus:
– Then omikron is more similar to other coronaviruses we know. Colds rarely go down into the lungs, says Spurkland.
Omikron seems to look more like the common cold?
– It goes in the direction of the common cold.
The leader of the South African Medical Association, Angelique Coetzee said Tuesday to Sky News that she has not seen a pneumonia among the patients she has treated, with the exception of one HIV patient with several underlying diseases. Coetzee also believes that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is overreacting to the omicron virus.
Must give it a few weeks
Spurkland emphasizes that these examinations were done in a laboratory, and thus performed “outside the body”.
– So it remains to be seen how this will be. We need another week or two to see what happens to unvaccinated people in Norway who are infected with omicron. But these are small studies that make you a little more uplifted.
– What does that mean for Norway?
– It will be difficult to stop, I think we will all sooner or later be exposed to omikron. So I can not see that you can stop it completely. But there will be significantly fewer people who get sick from pneumonia and end up in a serious condition.
The big question: Omicron in the unvaccinated
If omikron is both less serious and the Norwegian population has good vaccine immunity, this can go better than feared:
– The fact that we are so thoroughly vaccinated, it alone will make the infection less serious. It remains to be seen when omikron hits the unvaccinated, whether they end up in hospital also because of omikron. We will not know until three or four weeks from now.
– But we must not forget that if very many are infected at the same time, there may still be many who need health care. And we do not yet know what will happen to the delta virus. Will it continue to increase despite the omicron?
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