KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While some peo­ple take com­fort in re­ports that the Omi­cron COVID-19 Vari­ant of Con­cern presents a milder dis­ease, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) says there is no con­clu­sion on this.

At PA­HO’s week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence on COVID-19 in the Amer­i­c­as, In­ci­dent Man­ag­er for COVID-19, Dr Syl­vain Aldighieri, said that peo­ple need to qual­i­fy very care­ful­ly when say­ing that Omi­cron is less se­vere than pre­vi­ous vari­ants. Aldighieri said not all ex­perts agree, and there was no def­i­nite con­clu­sion that Omi­cron caus­es a milder dis­ease. Even if it was the case, he said peo­ple need to con­sid­er that an un­con­trolled trans­mis­sion of a pathogen that caus­es less se­vere dis­ease would still lead to cas­es of which many can still progress to se­vere dis­ease and death. 

“There­fore, we would cau­tion de­scrib­ing the dis­ease caused by Omi­cron as less se­vere and cer­tain­ly not as mild,” Aldighieri said

Di­rec­tor of Health Emer­gen­cies Dr Ciro Ugarte said even though Omi­cron caus­es less se­vere symp­to­ma­tol­ogy, the in­crease in cas­es in the short term means that health ser­vices are over­whelmed. Ugarte said that in the Amer­i­c­as, at least 24 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries re­port­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in COVID-19 deaths in re­cent days. He said peo­ple need to main­tain pre­ven­tive mea­sures be­cause there was a need to re­duce trans­mis­sion in all cas­es.

“We can­not low­er our guard think­ing the Omi­cron vari­ant is less se­ri­ous and that we can live it up. No! As I said, many coun­tries are re­port­ing in­creas­es in deaths. There­fore, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is for all the pop­u­la­tion and health au­thor­i­ties to re­port cas­es that are oc­cur­ring so the pop­u­la­tion can be pro­tect­ed, but com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of all of us” Ugarte said.

While the Omi­cron sub-vari­ant BA.2 caus­es some con­cern among peo­ple, Aldighieri said it was im­por­tant to re­mem­ber the evo­lu­tion of the SARS/COV2 virus is a dy­nam­ic process, and PA­HO is con­stant­ly eval­u­at­ing it. He ex­plained that re­searchers dis­cov­ered four sub-lin­eage of the Omi­cron Vari­ant: BA.1, BA.1.1, BA.2 and BA.3. Glob­al­ly, BA.1 is the pre­dom­i­nant sub-lin­eage. In North Amer­i­ca, BA.1 and BA.1.1 ac­counts for 95 per cent of sam­ples se­quenced in North Amer­i­ca and 87 per cent in South Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Aldighieri said there are of­fi­cial re­ports on de­tect­ing BA.2 in Mex­i­co, Ar­genti­na and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Over­all, it has been de­tect­ed in just .1 per cent of sam­ples se­quenced.

“Let us re­mem­ber that the in­tro­duc­tion and spread of the sev­er­al sub-lin­eages of Omi­cron is an ex­pect­ed event, and we will no doubt see an in­crease in its trans­mis­sion and spread dur­ing the next few days and weeks. It is nec­es­sary to take in­to ac­count that it is one sin­gle vari­ant, and at present, there is no rea­son to be con­cerned ad­di­tion­al­ly be­cause of this.”

Aldighieri said there was no sol­id ev­i­dence to show a clin­i­cal pat­tern of change in any of the four sub-lin­eages or that it could lead to more fa­tal­i­ties. He as­sured that PA­HO would re­port time­ly on any change or im­pact on pub­lic health. 

“Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of lin­eage and sub-lin­eage is the re­sult of deep analy­sis on ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al that al­lows us to see many changes that will emerge. These changes are not enough to clas­si­fy it as a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent vari­ant, so it re­mains as Omi­cron.”