What are the countries with the most infected with covid-19?
0:50
Editor's note: Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2009 to 2017, oversaw responses to the H1N1, Ebola, and Zika epidemics. He is President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies, and Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Shama Cash-Goldwasser, an Infectious Diseases physician and epidemiologist, is Senior Technical Advisor to the Resolve to Save Lives Outbreak Prevention team, an initiative of Vital Strategies.
(CNN) --
The omicron variant is causing a tsunami, not a wave, of infections in the United States. We have learned a lot about this variant of the new coronavirus since it was identified less than two months ago. We know that it is highly transmissible and that it now accounts for almost all new cases of covid-19, having pushed the delta variant into the background. Omicron causes much less severe disease than delta, especially among people who are fully vaccinated and boosted. And it appears that the current omicron-driven spike in Covid-19 cases may subside almost as quickly as it occurred.
But the news is not as good as it seems.
The rapid increase in cases is causing an increase in hospitalizations and deaths, especially among the unvaccinated, and may continue to rise for several weeks, even after the number of cases begins to decline.
The huge increase in cases is already putting our health system at the limit of its capacity, as the sick flood doctors' offices and hospitals, which are understaffed because health workers are also falling ill with covid-19 and cannot to work.
Ómicron shakes the world and there was another record of cases with almost 3.8 million in one day.
Which countries are most infected?
Since the omicron variant causes less severe illness than delta, some have been tempted to claim that it is no worse than a bad seasonal flu.
Although this was not accurate a year ago (previous coronavirus variants were far deadlier than any flu strain in the last 100 years), omicron is comparable in severity to the flu.
But there are important caveats.
advertising
Individually, for vaccinated and boosted people, covid-19 caused by omicron and the flu are similar in severity in many respects. For the vast majority of vaccinated people, Covid-19 will likely not cause symptoms worse than a cold or the flu, or even be completely asymptomatic. Most will recover within a few days, although some will require hospitalization, and some, sadly—mainly the unvaccinated, the elderly, those who are severely immunocompromised, or those with multiple underlying comorbidities—will die.
As with the delta variant, the unvaccinated are at much higher risk of severe omicron disease than the vaccinated.
The risk of death from delta among the unvaccinated was at least 10 times greater than the risk of death among the vaccinated.
In the case of omicron, the risk of death is estimated to be 90% lower than the risk of death from delta;
perhaps about 0.1% (1 in 1,000) of those infected by omicron will die.
But if the risk of death for unvaccinated people is 10 times greater than the risk of death for vaccinated people, the unvaccinated face a greater risk of death from the omicron variant than from the flu, while the vaccinated have extremely low risk of death from omicron.
Covid hits the Mexican economy and labor market 0:53
However, on a societal level, over the next few weeks, the omicron variant is likely to be much worse than "just the flu."
The omicron is amazingly infectious.
With the possible exceptions of measles and chicken pox, it is perhaps the most infectious disease there is.
Today in the United States, as many as one in 10 people may have COVID-19 caused by that variant.
Think of it like this: The flu infects about 60 million people in the United States for three to four months. The omicron variant will likely infect at least twice that number in just three to four weeks. That means there could be 10 times more omicron infections than flu in the worst week of the omicron variant's peak, and the flu itself often overwhelms hospitals at the peak of its season.
About one-third of Americans age 5 and older have not completed their primary vaccination series (two doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine).
Only 40% of people eligible for a booster dose have received one.
In some communities, especially in the southern states and the Rocky Mountain region, vaccination rates are much lower.
Austria passes the strictest vaccination mandate in the European Union.
That's how it works
A large number of cases, especially among unvaccinated people and others with serious illnesses, stress our health care system and put us all at risk, even those who cannot access care due to non-Covid emergencies, such as heart attacks and strokes.
Anyone who says they know what comes after the omicron variant doesn't understand covid-19.
We don't know what will come next.
Omicron could be the last big wave of covid-19 before it becomes a more manageable endemic disease.
Or the delta could resurface while the omicron fades away.
Or there could be another variant that is both extremely transmissible and highly virulent, next month or five years from now.
We simply cannot predict the future of covid-19 or the next infectious disease threat, so we must increase our ability to adapt and withstand the blows.
Do covid-19 vaccines affect fertility?
0:47
Even if you don't consider yourself high risk, contracting COVID-19 can end up being more than a minor inconvenience. It is also unclear to what extent an infection with the omicron variant protects you from contracting covid-19 again. Many non-serious infections do not generate strong immunity. Now is not the time to give up or "let go." But that does not mean that covid-19 has to dominate our lives. We can make a big difference by taking simple steps to limit transmission, protect the most vulnerable from infection, and protect healthcare.
This means vaccinating everyone who is willing to do so; use masks in public and especially in closed and crowded places; switch to more protective N95 masks when indicated by individual (elderly, immunosuppressed) or situational risk (people gathered together, indoors, and without a mask in an area of high covid prevalence); increase rapid tests; isolate the most vulnerable contacts for a full 10 days to limit their risk; and guarantee the universal availability of effective treatments against covid.
Everyone is tired of the pandemic.
But the virus is adapting, and the faster we adapt, the less Covid-19 will dominate our lives.
By working together, we can minimize the impact of the omicron variant and be in a better position to deal with whatever COVID-19 or other health threat it throws at us next.
coronavirusómicron
