A large study from the United Kingdom has provided more clarity about omikron, the corona variant that has forced us into a new lockdown. “The most reliable data to date”, microbiologist and OMT member Marc Bonten describes the first results of the ongoing research of Imperial College. The researchers studied 56,000 infections with omikron and 269,000 infections with the earlier ‘delta variant’. What is now clear about this new variant and what is not yet?
Does omikron make less sick than delta?
The short answer is: probably. According to the British research the chance is 40 to 45 percent less likely to be hospitalized for a day or more. According to Bonten, this is a first estimate; “The researchers stress exhaustively how uncertain that estimate still is, because we are at a very early stage in the advance of omikron.”
Virologist at the UMCG Bert Niesters notes that the variant is currently mainly circulated among young people, and they become less ill anyway. “If more elderly people are infected in the future and they do come to hospital, we will still have a big problem,” he says in the newspaper. NOS Radio 1 News.
The British researchers correct their data for the number of young people: this means that they include the ages of the people who now become ill in their projections. “But there aren’t many elderly people in the study yet, so if you adjust for that, you’re not sure yet,” says Niesters. A smaller group of people studied also means a larger margin of uncertainty.
What does this mean for the wave that is approaching us in the Netherlands?
A less pathogenic variant might be good news, but on the other hand, the variant is much more contagious than delta. Omikron can still lead to considerably more hospital admissions.
“Even if half of the people who would otherwise be admitted are not admitted now, but a lot of people are infected at the same time, you still have a wave of admissions,” says epidemiologist Frits Rosendaal (LUMC).
The higher contagiousness was reason for the OMT to sound the alarm last week: if no measures were taken, the RIVM expects that more than four thousand corona patients will need an IC bed at the beginning of February. By comparison, there are currently just under 600 corona patients in the ICU, and at the peak of the first wave there were about 1,400.
In the models, RIVM assumed that the variant is just as sickening as delta. “If you change the assumption that the chance of hospitalization is less, then the predictions will of course be slightly different, slightly better,” says Bonten. “But even then there are still possible scenarios that lead to a lot of hospital admissions.”
Can the situation in the United Kingdom be compared with the Netherlands?
The researchers looked at infections in England from the beginning of December. The situation in the Netherlands is of course not entirely the same, but according to Bonten the situation is comparable in a number of areas. “For example, the age structure of the population, how health care is organized and vaccination coverage.”
According to Bonten, these data are generally more comparable than the data from South Africa, where the variant was first discovered. A South African study found that there were 80 percent fewer hospital admissions with omikron.
What does this mean for the measures?
Although there are some uncertainties associated with the research, some on social media are still hopeful: can we (partly) return the measures with a less sickening variant? And would this variant be positive news in the long term?
Rosendaal is clear: he believes that there are still “all the reasons” for the measures that now apply. “We are on a high wave, and a tidal wave is coming over it. Now that tidal wave may seem to be less than that, but that is no reason to let everything go. So I would urge people to have a cheerful, but modest to celebrate Christmas.”
As for the long term, Bonten says that in the future it is “theoretically possible” that we will eventually move to a more favorable situation with a much more contagious variant that is less pathogenic. But it’s just “one of the possibilities,” he emphasizes.
Rosendaal also believes that omikron could be “the ticket out of the pandemic” in the future. That is an optimistic picture, he admits, and the uncertainties of the research also mean that there are reservations about optimism. “It could also be disappointing.”
–
