Equally passionate has been outrage from my countrymen as the Western World moved at warp speed to isolate the country after SA scientists uncovered the new Omicron variant of Covid-19. This self-righteous anger, however, might have been premature. Although the variant may well have initially been imported into SA, there is now little question the country has become Omicron’s global hotspot. That dubious honour enables local scientists to take advantage of abundant data. Unfortunately, this is a double edged sword. As the WSJ article below explains, SA researchers have discovered Omicron can get past natural immunity acquired by previously infected Covid patients. So SA’s borders are unlikely to be re-opened anytime soon. The good news, though, is although more easily transmissible, this variant appears to be less dangerous. That helped Mr Market regain some composure with Wall Street rebounding strongly last night. Small blessings. – Alec Hogg
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Scientists studying Omicron in South Africa see rise in Covid-19 reinfections
The Wall Street Journal reports that the findings suggest previous infection provides less protection against the new variant than against others.Â
By Gabriele Steinhauser, Joanna Sugden and Drew Hinshaw of The Wall Street Journal
Scientists in South Africa tracking the spread of the Omicron variant said Thursday they are seeing a rise in reinfections in people who had recovered from Covid-19 as the country reported another sharp daily rise in new cases.
The scientists’ conclusions suggest previous infection provides less protection against the new variant than against earlier versions. They also offer a possible explanation of why Omicron has been able to spread so quickly in the country, outpacing even the highly transmissible Delta variant, which is currently dominant in much of the rest of the world.
South Africa’s biggest private health insurer and other health experts estimate that around 70% of the country’s 60 million citizens have already had Covid-19 and hence some immunity against new infection. Omicron appears to be able to evade some of this immunity, giving it an advantage in a population with a high infection rate, the scientists said in a research paper, which hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“Previous infection used to protect against Delta, and now with Omicron it doesn’t seem to be the case,” said Professor Anne von Gottberg, a clinical microbiologist at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases, or NICD, and one of the authors of the paper.
Prof. von Gottberg said a past infection should still offer protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death. Vaccines have also fended off the worst of the disease caused by variants with some similar characteristics to Omicron, giving reasons for hope that they will do so in the case of the new variant.
South Africa, which has the largest known Omicron outbreak in the world, reported 11,535 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, up from 8,561 a day earlier, the NICD said. Last Thursday—also the day South Africa announced the discovery of the new variant—2,465 Covid-19 cases were identified. On Nov. 8, when the first Omicron case was detected, the authorities reported 116 cases.
The institute didn’t say what variant caused the new infections, but scientists say that Omicron is now the dominant variant in South Africa. In an indication that large numbers of infections aren’t being detected, the proportion of tests coming back positive increased to 22.4% from 16.5% on Wednesday.
South Africa uses vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, and Johnson & Johnson, having suspended the use of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford due to its limited effectiveness against the earlier Beta variant.
Omicron has been detected in more than 30 countries world-wide, with many of those cases linked to travel from southern Africa. In a minority of countries, including the U.S., U.K., Belgium and Germany, Omicron has been identified in people who aren’t known to have had contact with travelers.
In Norway, more than 50 people who attended a company Christmas party in Oslo have tested positive for Covid-19 in what authorities said on Thursday was a likely outbreak of the new variant.
At least one of those people is a confirmed Omicron case, the Oslo municipality said, citing genome sequencing from that patient. The remaining roughly 50 people who tested positive for Covid-19 are being investigated to see whether they have the variant, the statement added.
All of the participants were required to be vaccinated and tested before attending, contact-tracing officials told state broadcaster NRK.
More than 70% of Norwegians are vaccinated. New rules announced Thursday were set to take effect at midnight, limiting gatherings to 100 people or less, banning the sale of alcohol to people standing at a bar, and requiring face masks in malls and on public transportation.
Participants came from around the country to attend the event in the capital, it added. Contact-tracing teams are seeking others who may have been exposed.
Like other European countries, Norway has been seeing an increase of cases largely attributed to the Delta variant, averaging more than 2,000 cases daily over the past week. The country of more than five million people is averaging about six deaths daily.
Since the emergence of Omicron, which carries more than 50 mutations compared with the original version of the coronavirus that emerged in 2019 in China, scientists, policy makers and governments have been desperately seeking more information on how it spreads as well as how it responds to vaccines, treatments and immunity from previous infections.
The World Health Organization declared Omicron a variant of concern on Nov. 26, based on the rapid spread in South Africa and virus mutations that suggest it could spread faster and better evade antibodies generated to fight the infection. The WHO also cited the risk of reinfection as one of the reasons for its concern.
Authorities elsewhere, many still tackling a wave of the Delta variant, are expecting Omicron to pose more challenges to their pandemic defenses.
Jean-François Delfraissy, who leads the scientific board advising French authorities about the pandemic, said the Omicron variant will become common in France and Europe by around the end of January. He told French television that he expects it to progressively take over from the Delta variant.
Germany tightened restrictions on Thursday to counter a surge in infections caused by the Delta variant that has seemed to plateau since the beginning of the week. Authorities are concerned that rising infections will result in more severe cases than the country’s hospitals can handle.
Most of the new measures extend restrictions that had so far applied at a regional or municipal level to the entire territory. These include restricting access to nonessential shops and indoor cultural events to the vaccinated and those who have recovered from an infection, limiting the capacity of large public events such as concerts or sports games, and restricting the size of private meetings for unvaccinated people. In regions with high infection levels, clubs will be closed.
Authorities also banned large gatherings on New Year’s Eve for the second year in a row. All schools that had lifted their mask mandates will have to reinstate them.
—Bertrand Benoit contributed to this article.
