Omicron variant is less severe but it's not 'nature's vaccine'

Two months after it emerged, the Omicron variant has ripped through many populations and is rapidly becoming the dominant coronavirus strain.

Worse, they say that a highly infectious strain running rampant, especially among the unvaccinated, could lead to more new variants emerging – and potentially another variant of concern. “I think people are expecting the virus to become attenuated, meaning that it will cause milder disease – but that is not a reliable outcome,” said Dr Jamie Scott, a molecular immunologist and professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

But it did find that Omicron infection improved existing immune protection from a vaccine, the team from the Gladstone Institutes and University of California, San Francisco said in a paper posted on medRxiv.org on Monday. More than 18 million people were infected in the week to Jan 16, with over 45,000 deaths, according to the UN health agency’s figures.

He added that what he has seen in Canada is consistent with the literature that Omicron seems to have a milder clinical outcome than other variants. “While the numbers of disease severity – and because of this hospitalisation – seem reduced, this seems to be offset by the increase in infection numbers,” Meyer said.

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