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According to a preliminary study, the risk of re-infection is increased with the Omikron variant of the coronavirus

2021-12-03T14:58:38.515Z


Researchers fear that the omicron variant could bypass immune protection. Initial data from South Africa support this suspicion: Apparently, many recovered people are infected again.


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How dangerous is Omicron?

Data from South Africa show that the variant leads to more reinfections

Photo: Eugene Mymrin / Getty Images

It has only been a week since South Africa reported the occurrence of a new corona variant.

Health data from the country now suggests that Omikron could potentially bypass the immune protection of those who have recovered.

According to a preliminary study, Omikron's risk of re-infection is greater compared to the delta or beta strains of the coronavirus.

When the South African government announced last week that a new corona variant had apparently led to a sharp increase in the number of cases in some regions, scientists expressed concern.

Because Omikron has more than 30 mutations compared to the original virus.

Researchers now fear that the vaccinations against the Omikron variant might no longer work as well.

Cases of the variant have now surfaced all over the world, in Europe, Asia, Latin America or the USA.

In Germany, according to the latest weekly report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Thursday, there are so far four cases of the variant classified as "worrying".

Experts assume that there could be a lot more.

The EU health authority ECDC is seeing signs that Omikron could be the dominant type in Europe in just a few months.

Figures from South Africa also indicate that Omikron could regionally displace the previously predominant delta variant there.

In South Africa, 74 percent of all DNA-sequenced corona test results indicated an omicron infection, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) announced the day before.

The number of corona infections there has skyrocketed in the past few days.

The country reported 11,535 new cases on Thursday, up from 8,561 the previous day and 2,273 on Monday.

To find out how dangerous the new variant could be, South African researchers have now examined data from infected people.

The study has so far only been published as a so-called preprint, which means that it has not yet been checked by independent experts.

The researchers observed that by the end of November, more than 35,600 of the 2.8 million people who tested positive in the country had already contracted the coronavirus several times.

In science, one speaks of reinfection when a person is infected again with a virus after having been infected.

In the study, cases were considered reinfections if they tested positive for the coronavirus again 90 days after the first infection.

Indication of immune escape

The scientists compared the results with the second and third wave of infections, in which the beta and delta variants dominated. It turned out that the other variants increased the risk of a first infection with the coronavirus. But the risk of becoming infected again after an infection did not increase. Apparently, after the recovery, there was sufficient immune protection to avoid being infected again.

However, with the recent spread of Omikron, the risk of re-infection has increased significantly. The data suggest "that the omicron variant is associated with a significant ability to bypass immunity from previous infection," the study's authors write. In technical jargon, bypassing an immune defense built up by other Sars-CoV-2 variants is referred to as immune escape or immune escape.

When asked whether Omikron can bypass the immune defense built up by corona vaccinations, the study cannot provide any answers, as the researchers did not have any information on the vaccination status of the infected, as epidemiologist Juliet Pulliam wrote on Twitter.

She is the director of the South African research center DSI-NRF Center of Excellence in Epidemiological Modeling and Analysis and one of the authors of the study.

In addition, the analysis could not take into account the extent to which people had access to corona tests at all and whether their test or social behavior has changed over time.

These points could have had an impact on the study results.

"One of the next steps is to quantify the extent of Omikron's immune escape, for both natural and vaccine-derived immunity, and its portability compared to other variants," wrote Pulliam.

In addition, data about the severity of the disease of Omikron infected people are "urgently" needed.

Leif Erik Sander, infection immunologist at the Charité in Berlin, comments on the latest results on Twitter: »In a preprint that has just been published, an increased re-infection rate in South Africa, triggered by the Omicron variant, is reported.

That would be a clear indication of Immune Escape. ”But questions still remained, especially with regard to vaccination protection.

more on the subject

  • New corona variant: When do we know the danger of Omikron? By Veronika Hackenbroch

  • Origin of the Omicron variant: gap in the Corona family tree by Irene Berres

  • Bioinformaticians on Omikron: "It's a mystery where the virus was hiding" By Jörg Römer

The SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach wrote: »This very important study from SA unfortunately clearly shows what many fear: The dangerous thing about Omicron is the enormous risk of re-infection, thus also the risk for those who have been vaccinated.

One more reason for the quick booster vaccination. "

Previously, the infectiologist Anne von Gottberg from the NICD had already said at a press conference of the World Health Organization (WHO) that a corona infection did not protect against infection with the new omicron variant.

"However, we believe the vaccines still protect against serious illness," she added.

Increasingly young children are also infected

Scientists in South Africa are currently surprised that increasingly young children are also infected.

"There is an increase in hospital admissions for children up to the age of five," said NICD scientist Michelle Groome on Friday.

This distinguishes the fourth wave of infections, which is beginning in South Africa, from earlier phases of this kind.

However, it is still too early to draw scientifically sound conclusions from the data available so far.

In the area around the capital Pretoria (Tshwane metropolis) alone, there have been around 100 young children hospitalized in the past two weeks.

After the over 60 age group, young children were now the second largest group there.

more on the subject

  • Corona protection for five to eleven year olds: Should I have my child vaccinated? A video by Dennis Deuermeier, Birgit Großekathöfer, Martin Jäschke and Jonathan Miske (animations)

  • Ema recommendation: you need to know about Covid-19 child vaccination by Julia Merlot

"We have observed an increase in hospital admissions for under five-year-olds," confirmed Ramphelane Morewane from the South African Ministry of Health on Friday.

In all of these young patients, the parents were not vaccinated, said the NICD doctor Waasila Jassat.

She did not rule out that young children are now more susceptible to the virus than before.

In view of the rapidly increasing number of cases, the Cape State is now preparing for the fourth wave of infections.

According to Health Minister Joe Phaahla, there are still no bottlenecks in the clinics despite the increasing number of treatments in the hospital.

So far, almost 80 percent of the cases have occurred in the metropolitan area of ​​Johannesburg (Gauteng Province) and the capital Pretoria.

Now their number is slowly increasing in the other provinces as well.

According to very early findings, Omikron is extremely contagious, but only causes relatively mild diseases in vaccinated people.

With material from AFP and dpa

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-12-03

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