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Employee in the intensive care unit at the University Hospital in Kiel: Whether Omikron leads to different disease courses than Delta is still unclear
Photo: Frank Molter / dpa
On Thursday, South Africa reported that a new variant of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus had been discovered.
It is now clear that Omikron can already be found in numerous other countries.
Experts are concerned about the high number of mutations at the important binding site of the virus line, which is one of the reasons why the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified the virus line as "giving cause for concern".
However, it is not yet possible to conclusively say which properties Omikron has exactly.
So far available data indicate that the variant could be more contagious than earlier, vaccinated people infected and usually leads to mild disease courses.
Dr.
Angelique Coetzee, a South African doctor who reported the first cases of Omikron infected people to the authorities, reported comparatively mild symptoms in her patients in various media.
However, the number of known cases is still very small and the findings are therefore associated with considerable uncertainties.
So what can be said at this point in time about how severe the disease caused by Omicron is?
"Preliminary data indicate that the number of hospital stays in South Africa is increasing," writes the World Health Organization (WHO) on its latest fact sheet from Sunday.
However, this could also be due to the fact that the number of infected people there is increasing overall and does not have to be due to infections with Omikron.
Especially young infected people
Also, there is currently no information that suggests that the symptoms associated with Omikron differ from those of other variants, according to the WHO.
Experts had previously reported that those infected with Omikron suffered mainly from body pain and extreme fatigue.
However, both symptoms also occur in conjunction with the delta variant.
"The first reported infections affected university students - younger people who usually get sick more easily," writes the WHO.
Severe courses would only be expected with a low probability with other virus variants.
In Hong Kong, an over 60-year-old was infected in a quarantine hotel.
He is also not known to have had a severe course.
However, even such individual cases are not suitable as evidence that Omikron is harmless.
More details will only be revealed when a broad average of the population has become infected.
When considering the severity of the disease, it should also be borne in mind that severe courses only develop after some time after the infection.
If you get infected today, you might not get seriously ill for one to two weeks.
Deaths usually occur with an even greater delay.
So far, none are known in the context of the new variant.
High infection rate in South Africa
Experts also point out that excess mortality data from South Africa suggests that almost all of the country's residents have been infected with the coronavirus.
"It is to be expected that subsequent infections will be milder," writes ecologist and evolutionary biologist A. Marm Kilpatrick from the University of California on Twitter.
"Therefore, we cannot assess the severity of new infections based on the data from South Africa."
In other words, immunity from infection with earlier variants could prevent severe courses with Omikron, as is the case with the previously known variants of the virus.
The same applies to the vaccination against Covid-19.
Experts therefore call for vaccination with this variant in mind.
Vaccinations generate a broad immune response and can therefore also protect against new variants of a pathogen.
The vaccines that were developed against earlier corona variants also prevent severe delta courses with great reliability.
“The only thing you can really say for sure: It's better to be vaccinated.
It's even better when you're boosted, ”said the coronavirus expert and virologist Christian Drosten from the Charité in Berlin in the ZDF“ heute journal ”.
How good the vaccination protection against Omikron is in detail remains to be seen.
That it is better than no protection is to be expected.
"All COVID-19 variants, including the globally prevalent delta variant, can lead to serious illness or death, especially in the most vulnerable people, so prevention is always the key," the WHO sums up.
They estimate that it will take days to weeks before the severity of the Omicron variant is known.