Geneva: Omicron Coronavirus variant, which was reported in more than 60 countries, pose a “very high” global risk, with some evidence that he avoided the protection of vaccines but clinical data about his severity was limited, the World Health Organization said.
Uncertainty that was quite large surrounding Omicron, first detected last month in South Africa and Hong Kong, whose mutuals could lead to higher transmission and more cases of Covid-19 disease, WHO said in a brief technical released on Sunday.
“The overall risk is related to the new variant of Omicron’s concern remains very high because of a number of reasons,” he said, repeating his first judgment.
At least one patient was killed in England after contracting the Omicron variant, the British Prime Minister Johnson said on Monday.
WHO says there are initial signs that people who are vaccinated and infected previously won’t build enough antibodies to ward off infection from Omicron, resulting in a high level of transmission and “heavy consequences”.
It is not clear whether Omicron is inherently more contagious than the dominant Delta variant globally, WHO said.
Strengthening the WHO Assessment, Oxford University researcher published a lab analysis on Monday which registered substantial falls in neutralizing antibodies against Omicron in people who have two doses of Covid-19 vaccine.
While the antibody defense of the AstraZeneca and bionech / pfizer vaccine courses has been damaged, there is hope for T cells, the second pillar of the immune response, can prevent severe disease by attacking infected human cells.
Protection threshold? A number of vaccine recipients did not produce measurable neutral antibodies to Omicron, Oxford researchers said.
One of them, Matthew Snape, said it was unclear how to say the real world decline in the efficacy of the vaccine would be.
“We don’t know how much antibodies are sufficient neutralizing.
We still haven’t really pinned what the threshold of protection,” said Snape, adding the best advice for those who have not been vaccinated was looking for early courses and for those who were vaccinated to get a booster shot.
Oxford researchers said there was no evidence but Omicron caused a more severe disease.
Their findings were widely in line with other lab analysis last week in the blood of individuals who were vaccinated twice carried out by researchers at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria.
This analysis also enrolled a significant decrease in antibodies that reacted to Omicron, with many blood samples not showing a response at all.
Both Innsbruck and the Oxford team said they would expand their research to those who had three vaccine shooting.
Pfizer and Bionech said last week that their two vaccine shots could still protect against severe illness, because the mutation was impossible to avoid cell-t-response.
They also said the third booster shot restored the level of antibody protection against Omicron which was comparable to those invited by the two-shot regimen against the original virus identified in China.
Who citizes the initial evidence that the number of people infected with the virus has increased in South Africa.
While the initial findings indicate that Omicron might be less severe than the Delta variant, more data is needed to determine whether Omicron is inherently less dangerous, he said.
“Even if the severity has the potential to be lower than the Delta variant, it is expected to be inpatient to increase as a result of increased transmission.
More hospitalizations can place the burden on the health system and lead to more deaths,” he said.
Further information is expected in the coming weeks, he added, recorded a lag of time between infection and results.