Omicron variant: Move over, Delta
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OMG! OMC was in the NYC at the NMA!
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The “highly transmissible” Omicron variant of coronavirus ripping through South Africa is putting disproportionately large numbers of children under 5 years old in hospitals, a top South African government medical adviser said Friday.
The alarming development raises the prospect of a new global battle cycle against the virus, given that the new variant has already spread to dozens of countries. The South African scientists also said the new variant was spreading much quicker than any previous wave of the coronavirus.
In a worrying virtual press conference, government adviser Waasila Jassat, speaking about the worst-affected area of Gauteng province (which includes the city of Johannesburg), said: “It’s clear in Gauteng, the week-on-week increase we’re seeing in cases and admissions is higher than we’ve seen it before. We’ve seen quite a sharp increase [in hospital admissions] across all age groups but particularly in the under 5s.”
She added: “The incidence in those under 5 is now second highest, second only to those over 60. The trend that we’re seeing now, that is different to what we’ve seen before, is a particular increase in hospital admissions in children under 5 years.
“We’ve always seen children not being very heavily affected by the COVID epidemic in the past, not having many admissions. In the third wave, we saw more admissions in young children under 5 and in teenagers, 15-19, and now, at the start of this fourth wave, we have seen quite a sharp increase across all age groups, but particularly in the under 5s.”
Jassat produced graphs that clearly showed how children under 5 years old are now being hospitalized at an alarming rate.
She said, for example, that in the city of Tshwane Metro, more than 100 children under the age of 5 were admitted to hospitals with COVID in the first two weeks of the new fourth wave (Nov. 14 to 27). In the first two weeks of the country’s third wave, in May of this year, fewer than 20 children were admitted to hospitals.
In a follow-up question-and-answer session, asked about the extraordinary numbers of children being admitted to hospital, Jassat said she suspected there might be an “immunity gap” and that the lack of vaccination of children might account for the numbers.
She said that with adults increasingly vaccinated, children are the ones who are “getting sick and need to be admitted.”
She added that pediatricians at the Tshwane hospital had told them, anecdotally, that “all” of the children ages 12-18 who were admitted were not vaccinated, even though they were eligible. “And the younger children, younger than 12, who were not eligible for vaccination, none of their parents, except for three, were vaccinated.”
She said this showed “the value of vaccination in the adult protecting the children in the homes.”
Just over 42 percent of all adults have received at least one vaccination dose in South Africa, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said.
Another specialist, epidemiologist Michelle Groome, told the virtual meeting that daily hospital admissions in the worst-affected parts of Gauteng province have rocketed to 78 from 19.
Groome sounded the alarm over the “rapidly increasing” seven-day average of cases which has gone from 332 on Dec. 1 to 4,814 today.
She said: “If you have a look at the slope of this increase, you can see that we really are seeing an unprecedented increase in the number of new cases in a very short period of time, really just climbing right up.”
She said the virus’ reproductive number—a measure of how many people each infected person infects—had climbed to 2.33 in Gauteng.
Groome said: “This is the highest we’ve ever seen it since the start of the pandemic.”
Phaahla said daily cases have rocketed by 9,000 cases per day, climbing from “2,465 new cases last Thursday when this variant was announced to yesterday’s high of 11,535.”
“This variant is indeed highly transmissible, including in people who have already been vaccinated,” he said.
This remark echoed the findings of a paper published Friday, not yet peer-reviewed, which, The Washington Post reported, claims Omicron is three times as likely to cause reinfection than previous variants. The Post said: “Statistical analysis of some 2.8 million positive coronavirus samples in South Africa, 35,670 of which were suspected to be reinfections, led researchers to conclude that the Omicron mutation has a ‘substantial ability to evade immunity from prior infection.’”
Phaahla attempted to sound an optimistic note by saying that he believes the new variant is more transmissible “but less severe” than previous variants.
He said that while vaccinated people are getting infected, a disproportionate number of those ending up in hospitals are not vaccinated and that the South African hospital system is coping for the time being and has spare capacity.
However, his remarks are likely to be treated with caution as hospitalizations tend to lag infections by several weeks, and the press conference left little doubt that the country is being pummeled by the Omicron variant.
He said the country’s COVID test positivity rate has soared to 22 percent from below 2 percent just two weeks ago.
Phaahla expressed his “outrage and disappointment” at travel bans on southern African nations, saying they “undermine international cooperation and solidarity.”
The UN has previously said such flight bans are a form of “travel apartheid” and could be counterproductive as they will dissuade nations from reporting new variants.
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OSLO, Dec 3 (Reuters) - At least 13 people in Oslo have been infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus following a corporate Christmas party described as a "super spreader event", and their numbers could rise to over 60 cases, authorities said on Friday.
The outbreak took place at a Christmas party on Nov. 26 organised by renewable energy company Scatec , which has operations in South Africa where the variant was first detected.
"This party has been a super spreader event," Preben Aavitsland, a senior physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told Reuters by email.
"Our working hypothesis is that at least half of the 120 participants were infected with the Omicron variant during the party. This makes this, for now, the largest Omicron outbreak outside South Africa."
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State infections by variant: https://covariants.org/per-country
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/12/omicron-covid-reinfection-vaccine-protection.html
Omicron continues to spread across the United States, and around the world, as scientists try to pin down how fast it spreads and how much of a threat it poses compared to other strains of the virus . As of Saturday morning, omicron cases had been reported in 12 U.S. states, pretty much all of which were among people who had traveled to South Africa recently. None of the cases so far in the U.S. have resulted in serious illness; and the World Health Organization has said that no omicron cases, which have been detected in at least 38 countries, have resulted in death.
WHO officials note that it will take weeks to know how infectious omicron really is and how effective the current crop of vaccines is against the new variant. Experts emphasize that vaccines will provide some protection against the variant, especially against the worse outcomes of infection, like hospitalization and death. “There’s no reason to suppose that they won’t,” Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at the WHO said. That said, preliminary data appears to suggest omicron is able to cause reinfection at a higher rate compared to previous variants, which is of particular concern to countries where vaccination rates are low.
That natural immunity to the virus might not hold up as well against omicron hints that the vaccines might not provide as much protection against the new variant as they have against previous strains. “It’s scary that there are so many reinfections happening, which means that vaccine-induced immunity may also be impacted in similar way,” Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale, tells the New York Times. The location of the new variant’s many mutations also suggests it is able to evade at some of the immunity built up by vaccines. But it’s not all worrying news: early data suggests “omicron won’t be impervious to the body’s second line of defense, T-cells,” notes Bloomberg.
Scientists in South Africa report that Omicron appears to be spreading twice as fast as Delta there. Part of the reason why omicron may be more transmissible is because it appears to have picked up genetic material from a virus that causes the common cold in humans. That is the conclusion of another pre-print study in which researchers “found a snippet of genetic code that is also present in a virus that can bring about a cold,” reports the Washington Post. That could mean the variant spreads more easily but only causes mild or asymptomatic illness.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
That is the conclusion of another pre-print study in which researchers “found a snippet of genetic code that is also present in a virus that can bring about a cold,” reports the Washington Post. That could mean the variant spreads more easily but only causes mild or asymptomatic illness.
How does that work out? That doesn’t even make logical sense.
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@lufins-dad said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
@george-k said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
That is the conclusion of another pre-print study in which researchers “found a snippet of genetic code that is also present in a virus that can bring about a cold,” reports the Washington Post. That could mean the variant spreads more easily but only causes mild or asymptomatic illness.
How does that work out? That doesn’t even make logical sense.
Why not? There’s not much selective pressure on the virus to become less deadly since deaths occur so long after contagion but there’s no reason it can’t happen.
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@renauda said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
No one ever said a virus behaved or virused logically.
I mean the conclusion. It’s very possible that the virus causes general milder symptoms, and even probable over time that newer versions will cause milder symptoms. It’s what happened with the flu and other viruses in the past. What is not logical is concluding that it is milder because it bonded with a cold virus…
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@jon-nyc said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
@lufins-dad said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
@george-k said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
That is the conclusion of another pre-print study in which researchers “found a snippet of genetic code that is also present in a virus that can bring about a cold,” reports the Washington Post. That could mean the variant spreads more easily but only causes mild or asymptomatic illness.
How does that work out? That doesn’t even make logical sense.
Why not? There’s not much selective pressure on the virus to become less deadly since deaths occur so long after contagion but there’s no reason it can’t happen.
It’s reasonable to assume the virus will become less deadly over time. Prognosticating Omicron this early? Not logical. And if it is less deadly, stating it’s because it bonded with a cold virus? That’s like the Underwear Gnome Equation.
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I have absolutely no problem getting a virus, however I'm afraid that I have no real idea how they work.
In that way, they're a lot like smartphones, which also seem to mutate into something even more awful on a depressingly regular basis.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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People are idiots. The larger the group, the bigger the idiocy.
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@lufins-dad said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
People are idiots. The larger the group, the bigger the idiocy.
I see we read the same literature.
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@lufins-dad said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
People are idiots. The larger the group, the bigger the idiocy.
So much for populism, eh? Right or left populism it doesn’t matter. It always comes back to the idiocy of the common rabble.
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@george-k said in Omicron variant: Move over, Delta:
I really can't imagine a group of more insufferable people than these 5....
Indeed. They remind me of the opinions/noise you'd here from a group of women outside a grocery store or at a happy hour who decide to get into a current events discussion. Personally, I only watch because of that sweet eye candy, Ms Behar.
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"Do any of you men have any eggs or the possibility of carrying a fetus? How dare you talk about what a fetus wants! You have no idea."
First, neither do you. Second, the fetus is the result of two ingredients, one comes from the man. #sexytime
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"Do any of you men have any eggs or the possibility of carrying a fetus? How dare you talk about what a fetus wants! You have no idea."
Bigot, the phrase is non-birthing person. Time for someone to get canceled…
