COVID-19 and Omicron Updates

2021/12/04
We’re starting to find out more about Omicron:
1)”Previous infection used to protect against Delta but now with Omicron that doesn’t seem to be the case,” said Anne von Gottberg, microbiologist at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.”
2) risk of breakthrough vaccination is also much higher. Out of 600 fully vaccinated travelers from South Africa, 61 tested positive for COVID. 16 of those were Omicron.
3) a much higher percentage of 20-30 years are being hospitalized
4) an alarming percentage of children under 2 are being hospitalized.
5) the Omicron variant has become dominant in South Africa. Cases of COVID have gone from 200/day, to 400, to 1,000 to 2,000, to 4,000, to 8,000, to over 11,000/day in as many days.
Remember, when you hear of cases being “mild”, that means mild for COVID (eg not hospitalized). All of the cases I’ve studied have been symptomatic individuals that are fully vaccinated.

Omicron Update December 9, 2021
Omicron Update:
* Pfizer says the booster offers protection
* Pfizer says 4th dose may be required
* South Africa says Pfizer offers 1/40th the protection as Delta
* Reinfection is 3 times more likely than with Delta
* South Africa cases are up 255% in a week
* 4x’s more transmissible than Delta
* UK cases could exceed 1 million by the end of this month
* typical seasonal viruses’ severity is up… suggesting recovery from COVID results in a compromised immune system. T cells may lose effectiveness against any pathogen

“In other words, Omicron is spreading in highly immune populations as quickly as the original virus did in populations with no immunity at all. If this holds and is left uncontrolled, a big Omicron wave lies ahead—bigger than we would have expected with Delta. Cases were already surging ahead of winter. The U.S. already had a too-low vaccination rate. And now Omicron threatens to eat away at the immunity we thought we had.”