“A new storm is coming” in Europe with the Omicron variant of Covid which “within a few weeks will dominate more countries in the region, pushing health systems already under pressure to the brink”. This was stated by WHO Europe director Hans Kluge inviting everyone to get the third dose of the vaccine. “Boost, boost, boost”, he urged, underlining that “the booster is the most important defense against Omicron”. The sheer volume of new Covid-19 infections could lead to more hospitalizations and widespread disruptions to health systems and other critical services. Unfortunately it has already resulted in hospitalizations and deaths, ”he adds.
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The invitation differs from the official WHO line whose leaders have repeatedly warned governments that the third dose of vaccine is a luxury and it would be better to sell the extra vaccines to countries in difficulty. The fact remains that infections run everywhere. “Omicron is becoming, or has already become, dominant in several countries, including Denmark, Portugal and the UK, where its numbers double every day and a half or three, generating unprecedented transmission rates,” he explained.
The point is that the scientific community – and with it the governments awaiting the data – does not yet know how effective the currently approved vaccines are against the new variant. “There is still no answer as to whether or not we need to adapt the vaccines to Omicron or any other variant,” announced the director of the EMA. It will take a few more weeks, explained the head of the agency’s vaccine task force, Marco Cavaleri. “There is still a lack of information on the protection of current vaccines against severe disease, even after the two doses. It is extremely important to collect this data before having a clear picture of what to expect in the future and what current vaccines can do ”.
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In the meantime, the EMA does not want to be caught unprepared and guarantees that it is already considering the development of new vaccines effective not only against Omicron but against the other variants. Both development and approval should not take long, because “we will not have to start from scratch with the updated vaccine composition because what we may need will not necessarily be very different from what exists,” the agency assures. The president of the European Commission has repeatedly reiterated that, according to scientists, 100 days are enough to update vaccines and that manufacturers have a contractual obligation to adapt them to new needs.
In short, Omicron is navigated by sight and what is known so far is that “this variant can evade previous immunity in people” and, therefore, can still infect those who are cured with a probability that is three to five times greater than the variant. Delta. On the basis of the first reported cases of Omicron, then, according to WHO / Europe, 89% reported common symptoms of Covid-19: cough, sore throat, fever. And the variant so far “has mainly been transmitted among adults between the ages of 20 and 30, initially spreading to large cities and clusters associated with social and work meetings.”
The good news is that current vaccines work, protect against disease development, hospitalization and deaths, and the priority at the moment, for both WHO and EMA, is to increase vaccine uptake both with both calls and increasing the offer. As was done with the approval of the fifth vaccine in the EU, Novavax. A serum based on proteins and not with mRna and which also has the advantage of being able to give a great boost to world vaccination, because it can be stored in a normal refrigerator, overcoming the obstacles of the cold chain absent in many third countries. “This will therefore allow us to supply very high quantities of doses, up to one billion per year, to the Covax program” and “this will help ensure that the world is vaccinated as soon as possible,” noted Cavaleri.
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First identified a month ago, on November 22, 2021 in laboratories in Botswana and South Africa that were analyzing samples of the virus taken between November 11 and 16, the variant quickly gained worldwide attention. On November 24, in fact, South Africa reported it to the World Health Organization (WHO), which already on November 28 was talking about a “race against time” to be able to stem it. At the moment we know that there are 78 countries in which it is present and that in one month there have been over 19,100 genetic sequences of Omicron deposited in the international database Gisaid. We also know that the new variant is becoming prevalent in some countries: currently there are at least 15 in which Omicron is present.
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It is also clear that the variant has a high ability to infect, between 3 and 7 times higher than the Delta variant. And Omicron is also known to include 32 mutations and a high ability to infect Spike, which the virus uses as a claw to attack cells.