The fast-spreading Omicron has cast a pall of gloom over Christmas and New Year celebrations
A man gets tested for Covid-19 at a testing site in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. Pic/AFP
More than a year after the vaccine was rolled out, new cases of Covid-19 in the US have soared to their highest level on record at over 2,65,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by thehighly contagious omicron variant. New cases per day have more than doubled over the past two weeks, eclipsing the old mark of 250,000, set in mid-January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University.
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The fast-spreading mutant version of the virus has cast a pall over Christmas and New Year’s, forcing communities to scale back or call off their festivities just weeks after it seemed as if Americans were about to enjoy an almost normal holiday season. Thousands of flights have been cancelled amid staffing shortages blamed on the virus. Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious-disease expert, said on Wednesday that there is no need to cancel small home gatherings among vaccinated and boosted family and friends.
But “if your plans are to go to a 40- to 50-person New Year’s Eve party with all the bells and whistles and everybody hugging and kissing and wishing each other a happy new year, I would strongly recommend that this year we not do that,” he said. The picture is grim elsewhere around the world, especially in Europe, with World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying he is worried about omicron combining with the delta variant to produce a “tsunami” of cases.
That, he said, will put “immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse.” The number of Americans now in the hospital with Covid-19 is running at around 60,000, or about half the figure seen in January, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported. While hospitalisations sometimes lag behind cases, the hospital figures may reflect both the protection conferred by the vaccine and the possibility that omicron is not making people as sick as previous versions.
US children in hospital in near-record numbers
The omicron-fuelled surge that is sending Covid-19 cases rocketing in the U.S. is putting children in the hospital in close to record numbers, and experts lament most are not vaccinated. Between Dec. 21-27, an average of 334 children 17 and under were admitted per day with the coronavirus, a 58% increase from the week before, as per the CDC, USA.
‘Omicron antibodies could provide immunity against Delta’
Being infected with Omicron may enhance immunity against the Delta variant of coronavirus, suggests a small study by researchers in South Africa. The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, posted on the pre-print repository MedRxiv, enrolled 15 previously vaccinated and unvaccinated people who were infected with the Omicron variant. The scientists used plasma, a blood product which contains antibodies, from the participants to test the ability of the antibodies to control both Omicron and Delta in the lab -- a so-called ‘neutralisation’ test. They measured this close to when the participants had symptoms, and again around two weeks later. The results show a developing antibody response to Omicron, with neutralisation increasing 14-fold over this time. However, the team also observed that the participants developed some enhanced immunity against the Delta variant, with Delta neutralisation increasing 4.4-fold. The researchers also show that vaccinated participants were able to mount a better neutralising response against Delta, while the response in unvaccinated participants was more variable.
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