Omicron, the Imperial College study: “Reinfects 5.4 times more than Delta. Protection with two doses of vaccine between 0 and 20%”

The characteristics of the variante Omicron coronavirus Sars The 2. Researchers of the‘Imperial College of London estimate that the mutation, first detected in South Africa, has a capacity of reinfection 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant. This implies that the protection against reinfection from the new variant offered by a past infection can only be up to 19% and with two doses of the vaccine the percentage ranges from 0 to 20%. To assess this ability to reinfect and evade two doses of the vaccine, scientists used data from the Health Agency (Ukhsa) and the Institute of Health (NHS). for all cases of molecular test confirmed between 29 November and 11 December 2021. Almost 220,000 people.

The findings suggest that Omicron’s proportion of all Covid cases doubled every two days until December 11. The study did not determine if it has a gravity lower than Delta. By monitoring vaccine status, age, sex, ethnicity, asymptomatic status, region and date of the sample, Omicron was associated with a risk of reinfection of 5.4. Depending on the estimates used for the vaccine efficacy against symptomatic Delta infection, this translated into estimates of the vaccine efficacy against symptomatic infection. from Omicron between 0% and 20% after two doses and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose. Confirming the importance of the third dose as virologists and immunologists have been explaining for weeks now.

“This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which Omicron can – says Professor Neil Ferguson – evade the previous immunity given by both infection and vaccination. This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a serious and imminent threat to public health“. For Professor Azra Ghani “quantifying the risk of reinfection and the efficacy of the Omicron vaccine is essential to model the likely future trajectory of the Omicron wave and the potential impact of vaccination and other public health interventions”. The analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was presented in the latest WHO Collaboration Center report.

Omicron’s penetration capacity also comes from data that are reported from other European countries. The prevalence rate of the Omicron variant of positive cases of Covid sequenced at Madrid, while the report published in the journal of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control refers to all cases registered from November 28 to December 7 in Denmark, it emerges that there were 785 Omicron infections in people aged 2 to 95, with a prevalence in young adults and 83.1% of infected people had completed the vaccination course; of these, 7.1% had already received the third dose. No deaths were recorded, while the patients who needed hospitalization were 9 (1.2% of the total), 1 in intensive care (0.13%).