Covid-19: How dangerous is Omicron? | The Economist

 💚 Cre: The Economist | Covid-19: How dangerous is Omicron? | The Economist

Reading & Vocabulary:

The world is on edge as omicron - the new variant of covid-19 spreads around the world. "Britain, Germany, and Italy announced their first omicron cases". Countries are scrambling to contain transmission. Researchers say it could be the most infectious form of the virus so far. What does the new strain mean for the global fight against covid-19? 

Our experts answer your questions:

Why has it been designated as a variant of concern?

Omicron has been designated as a variant of concern because of the large number of mutations to its spike protein. It has more mutations than any other variant that has been observed so far by genomic surveillance, and a large number of those mutations are on sites of the spike protein which are known as the binding domain which is the bit of the spike that binds to your cells and they're also the bit of the spike on which antibodies the parts of your immune system which protect you from infection bind in order to prevent that from happening, so lots of mutations on sites where antibodies are being created is of concern.

Between the mutations discovered on the virus itself and this epidemiological data, there are reasons to believe that omicron may indeed be a lot more contagious than delta which is the current variant dominant around the world.

Is omicron more dangerous than the delta variant?

We don't know yet whether omicron causes more severe disease than delta or other variants. It's still too early to tell however preliminary evidence suggests that this may not be the case, and that really hasn't been the case with previous variants. They usually are a lot more contagious but they're not deadlier.

But what we can be fairly confident about is that at least for the component of your immune system that the antibodies run. That is one of the what's known as the humoral immune system. The variant is going to erode the immunity conferred by vaccines to almost certainly a greater extent than any of the other variants that have emerged so far. That's thanks to all of those mutations on the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein. But what we don't know is how far it's going to spread and how sick it's going to make people when it does or if it does and all of that data is coming in over the next two weeks.

Will new vaccines be needed?

The truth is that we don't know yet whether we are going to need new vaccines for omicron that depends on both how widely it spreads around the world and the degree to which it erodes immunity either that built up through infection or vaccination. If the answer to both of those is a lot, then we may need to update them but the good news is that that's a quick process. It takes only a couple of weeks to do the technical bits and then a few more weeks for the safety checks and to spin up mass production.

What are governments doing to contain the spread of omicron?

Many countries have banned travel from South Africa or have placed heavy restrictions such as quarantines at hotels for people arriving from there. Of course, these measures will only delay the spread of the virus if indeed it turns out to be a lot more contagious than delta in which case it will eventually overtake delta as the dominant variant worldwide, but these measures can temporarily slow down any outbreaks that omicron may cause.

As well as implementing a travel ban, the British government has reintroduced rules about mask-wearing in public spaces and on public transport and has also reintroduced guidance around social distancing. This is a sensible precaution given that omicron is almost certainly already seated in the community. 

Is this new variant a setback in the fight against Covid 19?

But even if omicron comes to dominate as the variant worldwide, we are not back at square one, we do have vaccines which are probably going to work very well against severe infection, severe disease, and death, and we also have lots of drugs now which may work against omicron. 

There's also some optimism to be had by gaining a slightly more complete understanding of the immune system, almost all of the discourse around immunity focuses on just one segment of the immune system which is antibodies, but there's a whole other deeper section of the immune system known as the T cell or cellular immune system, and because of the way that works which is very very complicated and much more unique on a per person basis, it's much much harder for variants to escape it, and there is no reason that has emerged to date that we would expect omicron to escape that as well, and immunologists that I have spoken to are hopeful that even if omicron does erode immunity at the antibody, level of the system that cellular immunity that deeper immunity will still be there for us even as it spreads around the world.