US President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr Anthony Fauci, broke down the details of the new Omicron variant into three major areas – transmissibility, how well it evades immunity from prior infection and vaccines, and severity of illness.
Transmissibility of the new Covid-19 variant
According to Fauci, the new variant is “clearly highly transmissible”, more so than the Delta variant.
And when looking at epidemiological data collected from around the world, it also indicates that chances for re-infections are higher with Omicron.
Fauci, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), also added that the lab experiments that tested “the potency of antibodies from current vaccines against Omicron” should be ready in a few days.
Severity of the Omicron variant
When asked about the severity of Omicron, Fauci says, “it almost certainly is not more severe than Delta”.
“There is some suggestion that it might even be less severe because when you look at some of the cohorts that are being followed in South Africa, the ratio between the number of infections and the number of hospitalizations seems to be less than with Delta.”
However, Fauci added that it was important to not “over-interpret” the data as the populations that were followed “skewed” young, and were “less likely to become hospitalized”.
“As we get more infections throughout the rest of the world, it might take longer to see what’s the level of severity.”
Best-case VS worse-case scenario
According to Fauci, the best-case scenario would be “a more transmissible virus that doesn’t cause more severe illness and doesn’t lead to a surge of hospitalizations and deaths”
“The worst-case scenario is that it is not only highly transmissible, but it also causes severe disease and then you have another wave of infections that are not necessarily blunted by the vaccine or by people’s prior infections,” he added.
He ended off by saying that he doesn’t think that the worst-case scenario will happen, “but you never know.”