It's been hard getting somewhat credible no spin news on Omicron. Do we know if it's less lethal than Delta and others, or the same? Worse?
Listening to Coronacast, the jury is out as we simply haven't had enough time to see what it is really like. Complicating this is that it started in South Africa - now, the virus does seem to be less threatening (lower hospitalisation and death rates) than earlier variants, but, the research is based on low numbers and a high proportion of the South African population have had COVID so, if they survived, they have some immunity from having had COVID and recovered.
The upshot of all of this? We simply don't have enough data to be sure yet. Anyone who says otherwise is running spin. You can be assured that there is a lot of research going on and we will know a lot more in a month or three.
There has also been a lot of talk of vaccines being less effective. Again, the data is based on low numbers, but it does look like AZ wanes to very low levels in terms of preventing infection, but still offers a good level of protection, maybe 40-50%, against hospitalisation or worse. Other vaccines also less effective but still giving good protection against hospitalisation. The research also indicates that mixing vaccines is a good thing. The advantage to getting, for example, Moderna if you previously had Pfizer, is not large, but if you had AZ (like I did) then a Pfizer or Moderna booster looks to be a very good third dose and should give a very good level of protection against infection, and more protection against hospitalisation.
I'll be at 6 months in Feb so am weighing up when to get the third dose. We are hitting summer so better situation for us, a very high proportion of the Australian population should be able to get a third dose by winter.
Now all we have to do is to get as much of the vaccine to poorer countries with lower vaccination rates so we can really reduce the impact of the virus and the probability of variants appearing.
DS
www.standard.co.uk
