Even though the number of daily COVID cases have hit record high in countries across the world, virologists and other medical experts believe that the Omicron-led wave marks a relatively milder phase of the pandemic since it began in March 2020.
Experts believe that a severe rise in the daily recorded cases have not translated into alarming rates of hospitalisation and deaths. The first Omicron case was reported in South Africa last month and contrary to the scare expressed by scientific experts and government officials at that time, the corroborated data has shown that high prevalence of vaccination rates coupled with antibodies formed from previous COVID infections have subdued symptoms in an Omicron case.
In a study from South Africa, the patients infected from Omicron were likely to display 73 percent less severity in symptoms when compared to the Delta-infected patients. Immunologists and virologists had earlier raised alarm over the number of mutations which the variant carried, many of which were on its spike protein. Sike protein is the part of the virus which attacks the host cells. Antibodies from Vaccination and previous infection provide the first line of defence and the variant is said to be vigorous enough to elude them. But various studies made public have shown that the Omicron variant infects the nose and the respiratory tract but does not reach the lungs, something which was noticed in previous variants. A study from Belgium quoted by Bloomberg news shows that Omicron-infected Syrian hamsters displayed less damage to lungs when compared with the infections from previous variants.
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“It used to use two different pathways to get into cells, and now because of all the changes to the spike protein, it's preferring one of those pathways (via the respiratory tract)”, says Wendy Burgers, immunologist at University of Cape Town, in the same Bloomberg report. This, she further explains, is the reason behind high transmissibility as virus “replicates easily” in the upper respiratory tract, the report further notes.
Another reason is the presence of T-cells and B-cells which are part of the immune system. In an event of a person getting vaccination or COVID infected, 70 to 80 percent of the T-cells present in the white-blood cells recognise the Omicron variant and provide a second line of defence, as reported in a study by Burgers and her colleagues.
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Nevertheless, with the cases breaking previous daily and weekly records by a large margin, experts worry that high transmissibility will cover a large portion of population in any country and with vaccination rates still low in many of the countries, we will still have a percent of population which will need serious medical attention. Already, reports suggest that hospitals across the U.K. are under severe stress and COVID cases have humbled medical infrastructure in the U.S. with a record number of children requiring attention. And with the wave peak nowhere in sight, governments will have to make tough decisions regarding allocation of medical resources as well as restrictions on public movement to ensure that there is no-to-less disruption in economic activity in the country.
