Home ›› 04 Dec 2021 ›› Editorial
A new and potentially more transmissible coronavirus variant first identified by South African scientists has prompted a fresh round of travel restrictions across the world and raised concern about what may be the next phase in the pandemic.
The strain, named Omicron, has been designated as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization, which said studies of it are underway as advisers continue to monitor it. While scientists say there is reason to be concerned over Omicron, they stress there is still a lot we don't know including whether the variant is indeed more contagious, whether it causes more severe disease or what its effects on vaccine efficacy may be. The reality is that we have only known about this virus for just over a week, so we don't really have the kind of data required to answer those questions definitively. People must be careful not to presume what the likely clinical picture will be based on what is being seen right now. US health officials should know in a week or two how severe that cases caused by the new variant will be, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci said that US health officials are getting their information from their counterparts in South Africa, with whom they've been in near constant contact. What we don't know is whether this Omicron variant will outcompete Delta in a country like ours, or whether Delta, because it's been so successful, will basically just push it aside.
That's another unknown. Omicron has similar mutations to the Delta variant, so there's an expectation that it will transmit more quickly. Based on early evidence in South Africa, it's certainly transmitting faster than the Delta variant. The best advice for dealing with the new variant is to get vaccinated and then get a booster shot, Collins said. Your best protection against Delta is to get vaccinated, and if you've already been vaccinated and six months have passed since you got Pfizer or Moderna, get your booster; two months since J &J, get your booster. That was a reason already, but now add Omicron to the mix.
And we do believe that this new variant, which will probably come to our shores, will also be something vaccines and boosters can help you with. Get your vaccine, get your booster," he said. "It's the best chance we've got to drive this Covid-19 pandemic away. Omicron includes mutations "seen in the Delta variant that are believed to increase transmissibility and mutations seen in the Beta and Delta variants that are believed to promote immune escape. The combination of mutations represents a significant potential risk to accelerate the waning of natural and vaccine-induced immunity," Moderna said Friday in a news release. If its current vaccine and booster are insufficient against the variant, one possible solution is boosting people with a larger dose, which Moderna said it is testing. The company is also evaluating two multivalent booster candidates to see whether they provide better protection against Omicron; both include some of the viral mutations present in the variant. AstraZeneca also is looking to understand the impact Omicron has on its vaccine, which is not currently authorized for use in the US, it said. AstraZeneca is also already conducting research in locations where the variant has been identified, namely in Botswana and Eswatini, that will enable us to collect real world data of Vaxzevria against this new virus variant. Which is about double the number associated with the Delta variant.
One major concern regarding this variant is how effective the existing vaccines will be against it because of its large number of mutations. As a result, we must immediately prepare to deal with the new variant. Imposing travel restrictions is particularly important for a country like ours. Because if this highly transmissible virus strain does spread here our weak healthcare sector might not be able to provide proper treatment to the large number of patients who might get infected with it. Given our poor track record of maintaining simple health guidelines such as wearing masks and avoiding social gatherings, it could be easily assumed what might happen if the new coronavirus variant does enter the country. If that happens, we may not have any other option but to impose another lockdown, which will have seriously negative impacts on our economy that has just started to recover from the damage done by the previous two lockdowns.
Beside imposing travel bans, maintaining strict screenings at the airports, ensuring institutional quarantine, preparing our healthcare facilities and strictly maintaining the health guidelines are some of the most important measures that we should enforce right now. The news of a new, more deadly variant of the coronavirus is disturbing indeed. Hardly had we been able to take a breath of respite after combatting the first and second wave which was brought about by the Delta variant, that we are again confronted with a new variant of the coronavirus, Omicron. It so far remains an unknown proposition. What we know so far about it is that it has a faster rate of growth and WHO has categorised it as the most troubling category of coronavirus variant at par with its predecessor the Delta variant. As of now, the new variant has been detected in Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong, the UK and Israel. It is not the end of the world, the sky is not falling in. His warning against knee-jerk reaction is also worth noting. We believe that instead of panicking, we should enforce the health and other regulatory measures forcefully when the time comes.
The science may still be uncertain but the Omicron variant has definitively intruded upon recent stock market euphoria. The designation as a variant of concern and then further comments from vaccine makers that existing vaccines will not be as effective, has caused widespread and significant falls in share prices. So, what will the economic effect be? It should be limited and that is mainly because it's clear that the UK Government and the US Government will do everything to avoid any further lockdowns. The world awaits the health data from hospitals, first from South Africa's outbreak, and then elsewhere, about its transmissibility and severity. The new restrictions announced here in the UK and around the world reflect real time science, and in particular an expectation that the variant takes some bricks out of the wall of vaccine immunity.
That in and of itself will have some economic impact. In the UK, real time data from restaurant reservations and online job adverts were well above the equivalent day last year. Retail footfall was just 8 per cent below the equivalent day in 2019. Things were beginning to get back to normal, even with a considerable number of Delta cases, and a steady stream of weekly deaths. Omicron has paused some of this process, merely by injecting a doubt that the pandemic is behind us. The World Health Organization has said it could take weeks to determine how severe Omicron infections could be, and how much protection current vaccines give. The University of Oxford said there was no evidence that current vaccines would not prevent severe disease from Omicron, but that it was ready to rapidly develop an updated version of its shot with AstraZeneca, if that is necessary. Moderna and fellow drugs firms BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson are working on vaccines that specifically target Omicron in case existing shots are not effective against it.
Moderna has also been testing a higher dose of its existing booster. So, prepare the healthcare system well and invest in it adequately with both material and human resources so as to avoid being overwhelmed should the virus go out of control. It is essential that public awareness programmes be beefed up and that the use of masks be enforced outdoors and in large gatherings. In fact, wearing masks should become our second nature. One doesn't know yet to what extent the new virus is resistant to the available vaccines. But that notwithstanding, the government's vaccination programme should be geared up further, since as of now, only 20.65 percent of the population have got two shots, and 33 percent only the first shot. We ought to learn from our mistakes of the past. The previous lockdown, enforced with the second surge in May this year, was lifted in August. But regrettably, the enforcement was lax, which resulted in an unacceptable number of deaths. We believe that the only way to stem the growth of the new virus is to deprive it of its vectors and prevent its germination. The virus grows in people and is carried around and spread by people; therefore, first and foremost, every effort must be devoted so that the new virus is prevented from entering the country in the first place.
The writer is an academic based in the UK raihan567@yahoo.com
