Rising infection rates and increased pressure on the intensive care service in Norway have pressured the government to introduce new contact-reducing measures.
Among the measures presented by the government was a recommendation to have no more than 10 guests at home beyond one’s own household, while once during the Christmas and New Year holidays one can have up to 20 guests.
Immunologist Anne Spurkeland believes this is the last time we will experience a Christmas with coronary restrictions.
She explains that the virus will have a narrower scope for action to sneak away from the antibodies we accumulate through vaccines or infections.
Therefore, she believes that the vaccine will be important in the future, also for those who in isolation will recover from an infection without risk to their own lives.
– When you are offered a booster dose, you should say “yes, thank you” to it, because then you are helping to create this dense network that the virus is unable to get past, and you will not be a contribution to the spread of infection.
But she has no faith that we will stop the omicron infection.
– Now it’s going to be tough
Spurkeland says we will probably see high infection rates and – probably – many hospitalized.
– OPTIMIST: Anne Spurkland is a professor of medicine at the University of Oslo and a researcher in autoimmune diseases and molecular immunology. Photo: Bjørn Roger Brevik / TV 2
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– But it will go fast, and I think that peak will come early, we will also get through this in the spring, she says to TV 2.
And adds:
– We just have to accept that now it will be tough, but afterwards I do not think we will see this again. Then my optimistic prediction is that next Christmas the hospitals and the health service will be able to deal with what is still present from coronary heart disease.
For the infection will not disappear, according to the immunologist. But:
– It will not be the threat it is this Christmas here.
No omikron patients to hospital
The South African doctor Unben Pillay has in recent weeks received several dozen corona-infected patients daily, but he has not yet had to send any of them to hospital.
The omicron variant of the virus, which has spread rapidly in South Africa in recent weeks, causes milder illness and leads to fewer hospitalizations and deaths than the delta variant did, Pillay and other South African doctors state.
– People seem to be able to cope with the disease at home. Most people recover during the isolation period of 10 to 14 days, he says.
This also applies to elderly patients and those with underlying health problems that increase the risk of serious disease from coronary heart disease, according to Pillay.
– MILDER DISEASE: 90 percent of all those who are diagnosed with coronary heart disease in South Africa’s populous Gauteng province are now infected with the omicron variant of the virus. According to South African doctors, it causes far milder disease than previous versions of the virus and results in fewer hospitalizations and deaths. Photo: Denis Farrell / AP / NTB
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90 percent
Pillay practices in the province of Gauteng, which with 16 million inhabitants is South Africa’s most populous and includes the country’s largest city Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria.
In the first week of December, Gauteng experienced a 400 per cent increase in the number of new cases of infection, and the omicron variant accounted for 90 per cent of them.
While patients infected with the delta variant have low oxygen levels in their blood and have difficulty breathing, omicron-infected people have milder, flu-like symptoms such as coughing and pain in joints and muscles, he says.
Far fewer
A report from South African Institute of Infectious Diseases shows that only 30 percent of all those admitted with covid-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill. That is less than half as many as during previous waves of infection.
The average length of stay for covid-19 patients is also significantly shorter, 2.8 days compared to 8 days earlier.
Only 3 percent of patients admitted to covid-19 in South Africa in recent weeks have died. During previous waves of infection, the proportion was around 20 percent.
Still early
– As it now looks, almost everything indicates that the omicron variant gives milder disease, says the head of the South African Institute of Public Health, Willem Hanekom.
– But it is still early and we need final data. Hospitalizations and deaths often happen later, and we are still only two weeks into this wave, he warns.
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