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Intensive care unit in Austria: Vaccination remains the best remedy against the omicron variant
Photo: Barbara Gindl / dpa
Anyone who has been vaccinated is well protected against a severe course of the disease after an omicron infection.
In Austria, there were practically no serious illnesses requiring admission to an intensive care unit for people who had been vaccinated twice within the past 120 days or three times.
According to the Austrian newspaper "Kurier", Daniela Schmid, head of the Institute for Infection Epidemiology of the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), explained this at the Austrian Vaccination Day.
It is true that Omikron is significantly more infectious than the Delta variant.
However, the course of the disease is generally less severe.
Schmid proves this with figures from Vienna and Vorarlberg: In 10,348 people with omicron infection without vaccination, six people came to an intensive care unit (0.58 per 1000 cases).
In contrast, of 8817 Delta infected people without vaccination, 89 were sick (10.09 per 1000).
Among the vaccinated infected people whose last vaccination was more than four months ago, the number of the omicron variant was 0.16 per 1000 cases, the delta variant was still 2.31 per 1000 cases.
On the other hand, none of the vaccinated Omikron-infected people whose second vaccination was less than four months ago or who had been boosted had to go to the intensive care unit.
Among the Delta infected, four out of 1024 people (3.91 per 1000) and three out of 544 people (5.51 per 1000) had to be treated in intensive care.
"As well as all approved Covid-19 vaccines work against severe disease progression - what is somewhat disappointing is the effect on transmissibility," said the former head of MedUni Vienna's Center for Virology, Franz X. Heinz, according to the newspaper.
The immune response against Sars-CoV-2 after vaccination, which decreases over time, is also a problematic factor.
This is what makes the third partial vaccination so important.
Austria was the first country in Europe to make general corona vaccination compulsory this week.
It applies to people over the age of 18.
However, there is also considerable resistance to this in the country.
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