December 3 – Bloomberg
“South Africa’s daily number of confirmed Covid-19 cases almost quadrupled from Tuesday as the omicron variant spreads across the country. The country recorded 16,055 infections in the last 24 hours and the positivity rate accelerated to 24.3% of tests from 16.5% on Tuesday… Hospitals reported an increase of 279 admissions in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 3,202.”
December 3 – Washington Post:
“Scientists in South Africa say omicron is at least three times more likely to cause reinfection than previous variants such as beta and delta, according to a preliminary study published Thursday. Statistical analysis of some 2.8 million positive coronavirus samples in South Africa, 35,670 of which were suspected to be reinfections, led researchers to conclude that the omicron mutation has a ‘substantial ability to evade immunity from prior infection.’ Scientists say reinfection provides a partial explanation for how the new variant has been spreading. The elevated risk of being reinfected is ‘temporally consistent’ with the emergence of the omicron variant in South Africa, the researchers found.”
The article quoted Juliet Pulliam, the director of an epidemiological modeling center at the University of Stellenbosch and one of the study’s authors: “Contrary to our expectations and experience with the previous variants, we are now experiencing an increase in the risk of reinfection that exceeds our prior experience.” And from Stellenbosch University professor Tulio de Oliveira: “Omicron is probably the fastest-spreading variant that South Africa has ever seen.”
December 3 – New York Times:
“If the finding holds up elsewhere, Omicron may be more difficult to contain than previous iterations of the coronavirus, lengthening the pandemic… ‘It is actually really striking how quickly it seems to have taken over,’ said Juliet Pulliam, the director of an epidemiological modeling center at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa… Omicron cases in particular are doubling roughly every three days in Gauteng province, home to South Africa’s densely populated economic hub and now the epicenter of the country’s fourth wave of infections… In a mathematical analysis, they estimated the variant’s Rt — a measure of how quickly a virus spreads — and compared it to the metric for Delta. They found that Omicron’s Rt is nearly 2.5 times higher than that of Delta… The rise in cases in South Africa has been accompanied by a week-over-week increase in hospital admissions, already higher than seen in previous waves…”
December 3 – Bloomberg:
“The omicron variant is now in at least 10 U.S. states, and White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said there is ‘absolutely’ community spread… The states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maryland and Nebraska reported omicron infections on Friday, and cases are guaranteed to keep on rising in the coming days... Covid-19 infections in the U.S. have reached the highest level in two months.”
December 3 – Washington Post:
“The Minnesota man who contracted the omicron variant of the coronavirus met up with about 35 friends at a New York City anime convention and about half have tested positive for the coronavirus… Members of the group traveled to New York from a variety of states for the weekend convention that began Nov. 19 and tested positive after their return, said Kris Ehresmann, director of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention, and Control Division at the Minnesota Department of Health… ‘We don't know if we'll see a lot of omicron, or we’ll see a lot of delta,’ Ehresmann said... ‘But we're likely to see a lot of covid’ out of the convention, which drew 53,000 people and tightly packed crowds from Nov. 19 to 21.”
What the world has learned in a week:
Omicron is highly contagious. It also appears antibodies from previous Covid infections have reduced effect on the Omicron variant. Over 10% of those hospitalized with Omicron in South Africa are children. There were earlier in the week encouraging comments from Israel regarding the efficacy of vaccines against Omicron, although some Israeli scientists are not yet convinced.
December 3 – Bloomberg:
“South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases said that 68% of Covid-19 hospital admissions in the Tshwane municipal area during the early part of the fourth wave were under 40 years old. That compares with 66.1% of admissions being over 50 in the early part of the third wave, it said… In the early part of the fourth wave 32.9% of admissions were severe, compared with 66.1% in the same period of the third wave. The NICD said 11% of hospital admissions were under 2 years old.”
November 29 – Associated Press:
“The World Health Organization warned Monday that the global risk from the omicron variant is ‘very high’ based on the early evidence, saying the mutated coronavirus could lead to surges with ‘severe consequences.’ The assessment from the U.N. health agency, contained in a technical paper issued to member states, amounted to WHO’s strongest, most explicit warning yet about the new version that was first identified days ago by researchers in South Africa.”
November 30 – Financial Times:
“The chief executive of Moderna has predicted that existing vaccines will be much less effective at tackling Omicron than earlier strains of coronavirus and warned it would take months before pharmaceutical companies could manufacture new variant-specific jabs at scale. Stéphane Bancel said the high number of Omicron mutations on the spike protein… and the rapid spread of the variant in South Africa suggested that the current crop of vaccines may need to be modified next year. ‘There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level . . . we had with [the] Delta [variant],’ Bancel told the Financial Times…”
December 1 – Financial Times:
“The Omicron coronavirus variant threatens to intensify imbalances that are slowing growth and raising costs, the OECD said… as it significantly increased its inflation forecasts from three months ago. The new variant… could delay the world economy’s return to normality, the… international organisation of largely rich country members warned. Monetary policymakers should be ‘cautious’, the OECD added, saying that the most urgent policy requirement was to accelerate deployment of Covid vaccines globally.”
December 2 – Bloomberg:
“The omicron coronavirus variant is spreading faster in Gauteng, the epicenter of the latest outbreak in South Africa, than the delta strain or any of the earlier mutations, an adviser to the provincial government said. There is the ‘strongest acceleration in community transmission ever seen in South Africa,’ Bruce Mellado, the adviser, said... This is ‘consistent with dominance of a variant that is more transmissible,’ he said.”
December 2 – Wall Street Journal:
“Scientists in South Africa tracking the spread of Omicron said… they are seeing a rise in coronavirus reinfections in people who had recovered from Covid-19 as the country reported another sharp daily rise in new cases. The scientists’ conclusions suggest previous infection provides less protection against the new variant than against earlier versions. ‘Previous infection used to protect against Delta, and now with Omicron it doesn’t seem to be the case,’ Professor Anne Von Gottberg from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases… said…”
December 2 – Reuters:
“The European Union's public health agency said… that the Omicron variant could be responsible for more than half of all COVID-19 infections in Europe within a few months… ‘Based on mathematical modelling conducted by ECDC, there are indications that Omicron could cause over half of all SARS-CoV-2 infections in the EU/EEA within the next few months,’ the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said…”
