Half of the staff of employees in the after-school program at Volla School in Lillestrøm have been infected in a new corona wave, which has hit the SFO employees at a record pace.
– The new thing this time is how abruptly many became infected. We went from no infection to half of the staff being ill, and it went very, very fast, says principal Ole Martin Hauglid Øyen to Romerikes Bladwho first wrote about the new wave of infection.
The 470 students and most of the teachers have just gone on holiday, without any reports of infection.
SFO is open until next week, and around half of a dozen employees are at home infected. Substitutes make sure that the SFO offer on Lillestrøm’s oldest school keeps open.
SFO leader Nina Elisabeth Mjanger is among those who have been diagnosed with the infection, and is at home until further notice.
– Severe cold
– It feels like a severe cold. For my part, I had a fever from the start, says Mjanger to Dagbladet from his home office.
She has not been infected during the prolonged pandemic.
Now she was diagnosed with an infection via a home test, and has not passed on to a so-called sequenced analysis to clarify which variant of the coronavirus has caused the infection.
CORONA: Chief of Staff at the infection department at FHI Preben Aavitsland says that BA.5 is more contagious, but that we do not need to be worried. Reporter: Magnus Paus sea view
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In several countries in Europe, the new omicron variant BA.5 is about to create a new wave of infection.
Now the experts believe that BA.5 will become dominant in Norway in just a few weeks.
– We expect another small wave, said FHI’s infection control expert Preben Aavitsland to NTB last weekend.
France
In France in particular, infection has increased in the last week. According to the website Worldometers, 95,217 new cases were registered there on Tuesday.
– The pandemic is accelerating again, despite the hot weather. The new omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are 10 to 15 percent more contagious, and this is what gives the virus an extra “kick”, says Benjamin Davido, specialist in infectious diseases at Raymond-Poincaré Hospital, to The Guardian.
– The vaccines protect
– New variants of the virus can be transmitted more easily, but fortunately it seems that the vaccines still protect well against serious illness serious illness, says chief physician in Lillestrøm municipality, Bettina Fossberg, to Romerikes Blad.
The most important advice to avoid infecting others is still to stay at home plus be careful with hand washing and shielding the environment when coughing.
– That many are infected at the same time is a result of us having closer contact with each other and more closeness now than we had during the pandemic, says the municipal chief.
She does not believe that there will be a need for strict infection control measures at the societal level.
Denmark: Fourth dose
All Danes over the age of 50 will be offered a fourth dose of corona vaccine from 1 October, and vulnerable groups will be offered from next week.
Nursing home residents in Denmark will be offered a fourth dose from 15 September. A total of 2.5 million Danes will be offered a fourth dose, according to Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Wednesday.
Infection rates are increasing in Denmark, much thanks to the new subvariant BA.5 of the coronavirus.
Last week, BA.5 accounted for a total of 59 percent of all corona cases in the country, reports NTB – Ritzau.
