Omicron is spreading faster than the Delta variant, WHO warns

Shafaq News/ The Omicron variant is spreading quickly in several countries where it has been discovered. Even if it causes only mild disease -- and that's far from certain -- that could still mean many people end up in the hospital and dying

According to government authorities, Omicron killed at least one person in the UK and put 10 into the hospital -- most of them vaccinated.

"It is spreading faster than the Delta variant in South Africa where Delta circulation was low, but also appears to spread more quickly than the Delta variant in other countries where the incidence of Delta is high, such as in the United Kingdom," the World Health Organization said in a technical briefing last week.

"Given the currently available data, it is likely that Omicron will outpace the Delta variant where community transmission occurs," WHO added.

It's not clear how severe the new variant is, although most cases that have been diagnosed so far have been mild. That could be reassuring, but if Omicron spreads more easily than Delta and previous variants, evades the protection offered by vaccines and by the earlier infection, and ends up infecting more people, that could mean more people end up in the hospital and more die.

"What we now know about Omicron is that ... it's spreading at a phenomenal rate, something that we've never seen before. It's doubling every two to three days in infections," UK Health Secretary Sajid Javic told Britain's Sky News Monday. "That means we're facing a tidal wave of infection. So we're once again in a race between the vaccine and the virus."

A new study out Monday from researchers at Oxford University adds to evidence that two of the primary vaccines deployed against Covid-19 -- the AstraZeneca vaccine used widely in Britain and around the world but not in the US, and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine used widely in the US, Europe and elsewhere -- won't protect people as well against the Omicron variant.

"Our findings show that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease with the Omicron variant is significantly lower than with the Delta variant," the researchers wrote.

Infecting both the vaccinated and the boosted

Several reports indicate that at least some of those infected with Omicron have been fully vaccinated and boosted, and tests against blood samples from vaccinated and boosted people indicate the same.

This may indicate that vaccination and especially booster shots provide reasonable protection against severe disease with the Omicron variant, doctors say -- although it is far too soon to know for sure. Health officials note that many of the first cases have been seen among travelers and people who might be in good health and take other precautions.

Disease modelers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine released a report Saturday that projects infections in England are passing last winter's peak in terms of daily numbers. This could translate into double the number of daily hospital admissions, as they wrote last year in a pre-print report posted online.

What's uncertain is what Omicron will do to more vulnerable people, who are unlikely to be among the first infected, but who will eventually see the virus come their way. This might include the elderly, people with varying levels of immune compromise, and those with pre-existing medical conditions.