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A child receives a corona vaccination
Photo: Denis Farrell / picture alliance / dpa / AP
The new Corona variant Omikron cares for scientists around the world.
The mutant, first discovered in Botswana and South Africa, is suspected of being more infectious.
In addition, the vaccinations are probably less effective against this variant, according to initial, but still provisional, laboratory data from South Africa and from the Frankfurt virologist Sandra Ciesek this week.
Omikron seems to ensure less severe courses. Only about a third of the cases end up in the hospital, and fewer of these people experience a stay in an intensive care unit - data from the CDC, for example, had also shown that. But there is currently another trend in South Africa: children under the age of five often end up in clinics with an infection. It is still unclear what is behind it. Not all children were treated for corona disease, but they tested positive for the virus more often, doctors from Johannesburg report.
In the past, the virus has generally not hit children as hard as adults. In a hospital in Soweto, however, twelve children were admitted on Tuesday, three of whom needed oxygen, reported the New York Times. In another, ten ended up on the children's Covid ward, but only one needed oxygen after a pneumonia diagnosis. However, it is not known whether the children came from households with vaccinated people. There is not yet a corona vaccination for children under the age of twelve in South Africa.
So far, this cannot be generalized, such trends have not been shown in all hospitals in the region around Johannesburg, the center of the current outbreak on the Cape. It is still too early to say whether children suffer more often from more severe Omicron courses, it is said. Or whether, due to the variant, children could suffer more often from the rare Pims syndrome, which, for example, results in violent inflammatory reactions in the body. However, this disease sometimes only develops weeks after the infection.
But the virologist Christian Drosten from the Berlin Charité also drew attention to the data from South Africa in the ARD Tagesthemen.
Especially children under five seem to be more likely to be affected by severe disease, he said.
There was a strong wave in South Africa that reached large parts of the population.
But if one assumed that the children there mostly had no contact with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen, one could deduce that omicrons lead to stronger courses in unvaccinated people who have never had contact with the virus in this country either could.
"Anyone who can should now be boosted immediately"
Accordingly, Drosten warned against speculation that Omikron would also be milder in Germany. The immune situation is different in every country. In this context, he is concerned that a relatively large number of people in Germany have neither been vaccinated nor recovered. According to previous knowledge by Omikron, these groups could be particularly susceptible to severe courses. “Anyone who can should now be boosted immediately. And in the face of the new danger, all those who have not been vaccinated have to consider whether they want to keep it up, «said Drosten.
About the increased infection rates, Drosten said that, according to previous data from other countries, the infection rate doubles about every three days, which is faster than with the delta variant. In Germany, the multiplication of Omikron will perhaps progress a little less quickly than in Great Britain, where control measures are no longer in force due to the higher vaccination rate and the strong pre-infection of the population. In general, however, the virologist expects that Omikron will also be the dominant form in Germany from January onwards and will have displaced Delta. Omikron could keep people in this country busy until next summer, according to the researcher in the NDR podcast "Coronavirus Update".
He interprets the preliminary data on the effect of the vaccines with cautious optimism.
"The immunity is clearly weakened, but it's not zero," he said.
With a view to Omikron, boosted people would have roughly the same immunity level as someone who had previously been double vaccinated.
South Africa reported more than 22,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a record during the fourth wave of infections.
The highest level in the country was once 26,000 daily cases and was triggered by the Delta variant.
Health Minister Joe Phaahla announced on Friday that the number of cases has risen by 400 percent compared to the week.
Tests showed that the Omikron variant was behind around 70 percent of the cases.
The number of corona cases has recently risen again in the USA. In the states of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania, more people had to receive clinical treatment for an infection. However, the number of confirmed omicron sequencing is still low. According to data from the CDC, which Director Rochelle Walensky presented on Thursday, more than 40 cases were confirmed, but the number of unreported cases is likely to be many times higher. At the moment, however, they are working on more precise analyzes, as the amount of data is still very small. The data suggest a problem that Omikron could take away from the advantage of lighter courses: If more people become infected, the risk of more bad courses automatically increases.
Omikron has around 30 mutations on the virus' spike protein, the part with which it attaches to human cells. These are more changes than with any other known variant. Some of the mutations were already known and gave the researchers an indication of possible properties of the new variant, which was first discovered in Africa at the beginning of November, but does not necessarily have to come from Botswana or South Africa. Others are new. How they will alter the virus is still a subject of research.
After all, despite Omikron or possible other mutants, Drosten assumes that Sars-CoV-2 will weaken into a normal cold virus in the long term.
The virologist cannot promise whether that will happen next year.
Perhaps this state of affairs will only be reached in three years.
“It will stop at some point,” he says.
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