The new variant virus "Omicron" (Omicron) is coming very aggressively. Because this variant has a lot of mutations, scientists are worried about its higher transmission power. There have been cases in many countries and regions including the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.
However, British experts believe that the new variants are not a disaster and are "cautiously optimistic" about the preventive effectiveness of existing vaccines.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) quoted the British government’s “SAGE” (SAGE) member and microbiologist Calum Semple on November 27 as saying that vaccination immunity may still protect people from serious diseases. .
Patients infected with Omicron may have nasal congestion, headaches, or severe colds, but the vaccine greatly reduces the chances of patients being hospitalized, being sent to the intensive care unit, or dying unfortunately, and this will continue to be the case in the future.
Semple bluntly said, "This is not a disaster. Some news headlines quote some of my colleagues as saying that the new virus is "very terrible". I think this is an overstatement of the actual situation."
The director of the Oxford University Vaccine Research Group, Andrew Pollard, also expressed “cautiously optimistic” about the effectiveness of existing vaccines to prevent severe illness caused by the new variant Omicron.
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In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Pollard said that most of the mutant spike proteins of Omicron are currently known to be similar to other mutant viruses. “This means that despite the mutation of the mutant strain, as we go through Alpha, Beta, Gamma and These variants of Delta viruses, vaccines can still effectively prevent severe illness."
He said that, at least from a speculative point of view, it should be optimistic that the vaccine is still effective enough to avoid severe illness, but in fact we need to wait several weeks to confirm.
"As we have seen in 2020, another large-scale outbreak among the vaccinated population is extremely unlikely."
