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Around 24 nations have sounded the alert for Omicron which has been detected in 77 countries even as markets in several countries were headed towards a tailspin putting a damper on the festive celebrations at Christmas and New Year. Omicron- first detected in South Africa in November- has been classed as a “variant of concern” by the WHO. The WHO has also said it would be “unwise” to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant. France and Germany are among the nations imposing travel curbs to tackle Omicron, while the Netherlands has introduced a strict lockdown over the Christmas period. In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that the government needed to “reserve the possibility” of bringing in new rules in England as Omicron cases surged, but did not announce further restrictions. According to media reports, so far a fraction of those infected with Omicron have been hospitalised, compared to a 10% hospitalisation rate during the Delta wave. The report said if the trend gets substantiated, then it could suggest that symptoms in this variant may be milder than in other strains, or that vaccines continue to be highly effective in preventing severe illness, or both. It also seems as if Omicron has already spread globally and is circulating within the community in many countries. There is need to laud medics in South Africa, who identified the strain, but only for the country to suffer pariah status. The fact of the matter is that as per analysis of sewage data, these appear to substantiate that Omicron has been around for some time, meaning early estimates of the ‘R’ number have been over-estimated. The World Health Organization (WHO) had said that Omicron is spreading at a rate not seen with any previous variant of COVID-19 so far. WHO also cautioned the world in taking the new COVID variant lightly, saying that 77 countries have reported cases of Omicron, and the reality is that Omicron is probably in most countries, even if it hasn’t been detected yet. In the face of the news on Omicron, steps to accelerate vaccination and booster jabs appear to make good policy sense. However, the re-imposition of lockdown restrictions could be a policy mistake, in our view, if it undermines vaccine confidence. A report from Columbia University claimed that emerging real world data has also shown that boosters can protect against symptomatic and severe disease. The real protection of the vaccine [booster] is largely against disease, and not against acquisition of infection. The report also said that Omicron is about twice as contagious as delta, according to models and epidemiologists from the U.K. It cited a recent study conducted on the variant which showed that it is “markedly resistant” to the antibodies found in even fully vaccinated people who aren’t yet boosted. The emergence of Omicron has prompted some countries to roll out COVID-19 booster programmes for their entire adult populations, even while there is lack of evidence for the effectiveness of boosters against this variant. WHO has expressed its concern that such programmes will repeat the COVID-19 vaccine hoarding witnessed earlier this year and exacerbate inequity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Omicron overshadows<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}