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Monday, February 17, 2025

Omicron v delta: Battle of coronavirus mutants is critical

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1168 days ago
20211207
A woman is vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. South African doctors say the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases attributed to the new omicron variant is resulting in mostly mild symptoms. (AP Photo/ Shiraaz Mohamed)

A woman is vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. South African doctors say the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases attributed to the new omicron variant is resulting in mostly mild symptoms. (AP Photo/ Shiraaz Mohamed)

By LAU­RA UN­GAR and AN­DREW MEL­DRUM – AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

 

(AP) — As the omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant spreads in south­ern Africa and pops up in coun­tries all around the world, sci­en­tists are anx­ious­ly watch­ing a bat­tle play out that could de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the pan­dem­ic. Can the lat­est com­peti­tor to the world-dom­i­nat­ing delta over­throw it?

Some sci­en­tists, por­ing over da­ta from South Africa and the Unit­ed King­dom, sug­gest omi­cron could emerge the vic­tor.

“It’s still ear­ly days, but in­creas­ing­ly, da­ta is start­ing to trick­le in, sug­gest­ing that omi­cron is like­ly to out­com­pete delta in many, if not all, places,” said Dr. Ja­cob Lemieux, who mon­i­tors vari­ants for a re­search col­lab­o­ra­tion led by Har­vard Med­ical School.

But oth­ers said Mon­day it’s too soon to know how like­ly it is that omi­cron will spread more ef­fi­cient­ly than delta, or, if it does, how fast it might take over.

“Es­pe­cial­ly here in the U.S., where we’re see­ing sig­nif­i­cant surges in delta, whether omi­cron’s go­ing to re­place it I think we’ll know in about two weeks,” said Matthew Bin­nick­er, di­rec­tor of clin­i­cal vi­rol­o­gy at Mayo Clin­ic in Rochester, Min­neso­ta.

Many crit­i­cal ques­tions about omi­cron re­main unan­swered, in­clud­ing whether the virus caus­es milder or more se­vere ill­ness and how much it might evade im­mu­ni­ty from past COVID-19 ill­ness or vac­cines.

People wait to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. The new omicron variant appears to be driving a dramatic surge in South Africa, providing the world a glimpse of where the pandemic might be headed. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)

People wait to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. The new omicron variant appears to be driving a dramatic surge in South Africa, providing the world a glimpse of where the pandemic might be headed. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)

On the is­sue of spread, sci­en­tists point to what’s hap­pen­ing in South Africa, where omi­cron was first de­tect­ed. Omi­cron’s speed in in­fect­ing peo­ple and achiev­ing near dom­i­nance in South Africa has health ex­perts wor­ried that the coun­try is at the start of a new wave that may come to over­whelm hos­pi­tals.

The new vari­ant rapid­ly moved South Africa from a pe­ri­od of low trans­mis­sion, av­er­ag­ing less than 200 new cas­es per day in mid-No­vem­ber, to more than 16,000 per day over the week­end. Omi­cron ac­counts for more than 90% of the new cas­es in Gaut­eng province, the epi­cen­ter of the new wave, ac­cord­ing to ex­perts. The new vari­ant is rapid­ly spread­ing and achiev­ing dom­i­nance in South Africa’s eight oth­er provinces.

“The virus is spread­ing ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly fast,” said Willem Hanekom, di­rec­tor of the Africa Health Re­search In­sti­tute. “If you look at the slopes of this wave that we’re in at the mo­ment, it’s a much steep­er slope than the first three waves that South Africa ex­pe­ri­enced. This in­di­cates that it’s spread­ing fast and it may there­fore be a very trans­mis­si­ble virus.”

But Hanekom, who is al­so co-chair the South African COVID-19 Vari­ants Re­search Con­sor­tium, said South Africa had such low num­bers of delta cas­es when omi­cron emerged, “I don’t think we can say” it out-com­pet­ed delta.

Sci­en­tists say it’s un­clear whether omi­cron will be­have the same way in oth­er coun­tries as it has in South Africa. Lemieux said there are al­ready some hints about how it may be­have; in places like the Unit­ed King­dom, which does a lot of ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing, he said, “we’re see­ing what ap­pears to be a sig­nal of ex­po­nen­tial in­crease of omi­cron over delta.”

Medical staff talk to a man about to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. The new omicron variant appears to be driving a dramatic surge in South Africa, providing the world a glimpse of where the pandemic might be headed. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)

Medical staff talk to a man about to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at the Hillbrow Clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday Dec. 6, 2021. The new omicron variant appears to be driving a dramatic surge in South Africa, providing the world a glimpse of where the pandemic might be headed. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)

In the Unit­ed States, as in the rest of the world, “there’s still a lot of un­cer­tain­ty,” he said. “But when you put the ear­ly da­ta to­geth­er, you start to see a con­sis­tent pic­ture emerge: that omi­cron is al­ready here, and based on what we’ve ob­served in South Africa, it’s like­ly to be­come the dom­i­nant strain in the com­ing weeks and months and will like­ly cause a surge in case num­bers.”

What that could mean for pub­lic health re­mains to be seen. Hanekom said ear­ly da­ta from South Africa shows that re­in­fec­tion rates are much high­er with omi­cron than pre­vi­ous vari­ants, sug­gest­ing the virus is es­cap­ing im­mu­ni­ty some­what. It al­so shows the virus seems to be in­fect­ing younger peo­ple, most­ly those who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed, and most cas­es in hos­pi­tals have been rel­a­tive­ly mild.

But Bin­nick­er said things could play out dif­fer­ent­ly in oth­er parts of the world or in dif­fer­ent groups of pa­tients. “It’ll be re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing to see what hap­pens when more in­fec­tions po­ten­tial­ly oc­cur in old­er adults or those with un­der­ly­ing health con­di­tions,” he said. “What’s the out­come in those pa­tients?”

As the world waits for an­swers, sci­en­tists sug­gest peo­ple do all they can to pro­tect them­selves.

“We want to make sure that peo­ple have as much im­mu­ni­ty from vac­ci­na­tion as pos­si­ble. So if peo­ple are not vac­ci­nat­ed they should get vac­ci­nat­ed,” Lemieux said. “If peo­ple are el­i­gi­ble for boost­ers, they should get boost­ers, and then do all the oth­er things that we know are ef­fec­tive for re­duc­ing trans­mis­sion -- mask­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing and avoid­ing large in­door gath­er­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­out masks.”

COVID-19Health


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