How does omicron compare to other variants?
What You Should Know 3:43
(CNN Spanish) -
The world begins the third year of the coronavirus pandemic with another worldwide wave of infections due to the omicron variant.
Although it is impossible to predict what the route that covid-19 will take in 2022, Dr. Elmer Huerta analyzes, with scientific data, what we could expect from the pandemic this year.
Will we be able to enter an endemic phase?
It is the great question that society and scientists seek to solve.
You can listen to this episode on Spotify or your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Hello, I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information on the new coronavirus.
Information that we hope will be useful to take care of your health and that of your family.
Today we will see what the current state of the infection is.
Above all try to describe what we can expect, based on the available data, during the first weeks of the new year.
Vaccines as an element to contain the coronavirus
As we heard in the episode of December 27, the main human element of biological containment of the pandemic during 2021 was the development of vaccines against the new coronavirus.
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For its part, in the face of the evolutionary pressure to which it was subjected in its circulation around the planet, the new coronavirus responded by changing its genome and forming new variants, the last being the omicron, which is becoming extraordinarily fast. the predominant in many countries.
In this regard, with the appearance of each variant, there are three characteristics that define its impact on public health:
its transmission capacity or infectivity,
its virulence or severity of the disease it causes,
and its ability to circumvent the neutralizing antibodies formed by natural disease or vaccines.
The omicron variant, a stone in the shoe in the pandemic
As we heard in the episodes of December 13 and 20, there was already early evidence that the omicron variant was much more infectious than the previous variants, especially the delta, which had been the most infectious so far.
In this sense, knowing that the original SARS-CoV-2 virus had a basic reproduction number (R0) of 2.5, that is to say that an infected person could infect between two and three people, it was calculated that the delta variant had an R0 of just under 7.
And while, Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom, considers that the R0 of omicron could be as high as 10, meaning that an infected person could infect up to 10 people around it.
It has also been proven that omicron is capable of circumventing neutralizing antibodies, infecting both people who have already passed the infection and vaccinated people, even with booster doses.
In this regard, according to the Imperial College of London, omicron is 5.4 times more capable of causing reinfection than the delta variant.
How serious is the covid-19 generated by omicron?
The last element of the puzzle - omicron virulence - is becoming clear.
Studies from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the United States indicate that the omicron variant causes relatively less severe disease.
In this regard, an American prepublication of the Houston Methodist Research Institute analyzes the data of 862 patients with covid-19 caused by the omicron variant, and reports that the patients tended to be younger, have previously suffered the infection and had less probability of being hospitalized.
They also report that patients with omicron required less intense respiratory support and had a shorter hospital stay, suggesting less severity of the disease.
Having clarified then that the omicron variant, despite being much more infectious and being capable of infecting people who have already passed the disease and have been vaccinated, causes a less serious disease, it remains then to ask whether during 2022 we will have the transition from the pandemic to the endemic phase of the disease.
The unvaccinated, key to the future of the pandemic?
Let us remember that the infectious disease that is constantly circulating in the community is called endemic, and can cause limited outbreaks related to weather or other situations in society.
We think that January will be essential to really know what will happen with the pandemic.
This is because, as it is already the dominant variant in the United States, the extraordinarily contagious infection will spread through 15% of the unvaccinated adult population and probably with low rates of previous natural infection, that is, of people who are truly virgins of infection. vulnerable.
In parentheses, a December experimental survey by the US Census Bureau revealed that about half of unvaccinated adults did not get vaccinated because they were concerned about possible vaccine side effects, 42% for "not trusting the vaccine. vaccine ", less than 10% because their doctor had not recommended it and approximately 2% because they have difficulties obtaining it.
The unknowns of scientists
So what will happen if those millions of unvaccinated people get infected?
Will they suffer from the mild disease that is being documented in people previously vaccinated or who have already passed the disease, or will they develop the well-known distribution in which 5% suffer from severe disease with a high possibility of death?
That is the unknown that we think will help determine the future of the pandemic.
If you suffer from a mild illness - apart from the enormous saturation of health services and the enormous disruption of basic services in society due to the isolation that millions of infected people will have to meet - it is possible that the endemic phase of covid- 19.
If a serious disease is demonstrated, apart from the effectiveness of the vaccination, it will be shown that SARS-CoV-2 continues to be a formidable enemy.
The worst that could happen this year is that somewhere in the world a new variant with completely different characteristics to omicron is formed, and that it puts humanity in check again.
Do you have questions about covid-19?
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes.
You can find me at @Drhuerta.
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Thanks for your attention.
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