The Threat of Omicron
Whilst Omicron is more infectious and is spreading more quickly, it is less life threatening according to new data from South Africa.
South Africa is witnessing its fourth wave of Covid-19 infections which is largely being seen due to the Omicron variant.
While comparing the three recent waves, it can be clearly seen that the severity due to this variant is much lower than either Beta or Delta variants.
The third wave, predominantly caused by the Delta variant, saw the highest 7-day average on July 8 with 19956 cases while a 7-day average of death on that day was 363.
Now, the current wave, the fourth one, has reported the highest 7-day average on December 15 with 22852 cases, however, the 7-day-average death number on that day has fortunately been as low as 27 only.
This puts the chance of death at compared at 0.001% compared to 0.018% before, so it is 18 times more unlikely to cause death.
It is perhaps due to these reasons that the national coronavirus command council (NCCC) of South Africa has decided on December 16 to have lockdown restrictions at level 1 only despite the holiday seasons and festivals ahead.
The latest study, by a team of researchers from the University of Hong Kong, has found that though Omicron develops 70 times faster in bronchial tissue, it replicates 10 times slower than the original Sars_Cov_2 in lung tissues. The study says that this could be an indicator of lower disease severity.
The average death numbers even in other countries where the new variant was detected almost three weeks ago don’t show any alarming trend so far.
A Data scientist associated with a government institution says, requesting anonymity, “Even if the death numbers will slightly rise in South Africa, it still does not sound an alarm bell for the rest of the countries because South Africa has the fourth-highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate with about 19% of the population testing positive for it. It means It has a significant percentage of people who are immuno-compromised among whom death rate is always high.”
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