The new variant of Covid-19 that is sending worrying signals from southern Africa sounds like something from Transformers. It has caused panic in the public and in the stock markets. The UK government has reimposed mandatory masks in England from Tuesday, and will require anyone travelling to the country from abroad to take a test for the disease. Omicron is the first variant to have scientists worried since Delta became the main strain in every country last summer. How bad is it? What does it mean for the future?
Scientists are waiting on three pieces of data to see what effect the new variant will have over the next six to 12 months. The first thing is how infectious Omicron is. Can it compete with Delta? The variant that faded away as a result of the Delta advantage was called "Beta", and it was a worrying one. The data from South Africa shows that Omicron is very infectious, but it's not certain if it will become the main strain.
Scientists are waiting for data showing the impact of this new variant on health outcomes, both in terms of hospitalisations and deaths. Hospitals fill up, and limiting social mixing helps to slow the spread of the virus and reduce the impact on health services, which is why governments impose lock down measures. Omicron may cause less severe disease and become more like the common cold in an optimistic scenario. It could cause the same disease levels that we have seen with Alpha,Beta and Delta in a more realistic scenario.
The data shows that Omicron could erode the immunity afforded by vaccines. This wouldn't necessarily mean that our current vaccines wouldn't work against Omicron. It would mean they would be less effective at stopping transmission. We don't know the implications of this based on the analysis of Omicron's genome. The impact of the vaccine developed by BioNTech on this variant is already being gauged.
What does this mean for us? We need to keep doing the things we already do to protect ourselves, such as getting vaccinations, boosting our immunity, and using the free home-testing kits to make sure we aren't infecting others.
It means having to plan for many different scenarios. Omicron can't outcompete Delta, or results in milder forms of the disease, or vaccine effectiveness remains high, so the first thing to do is that. If an updated vaccine is needed immediately, scientists could theoretically deliver one in a matter of weeks, followed by a massive vaccination campaign to get this variant-specific booster out to populations as quickly as possible. Governments have learned that it is better to move earlier with precautionary measures than to watch a crisis unfold.
Scientists are now seen as bad guys and are more transparent about what they know and don't know. Everyone wants Covid to be over and done with. When will this end is not the right question to be asking, as it is more appropriate to ask how to manage this infectious disease in a more effective way so we get back more of our normal life.
The winter of last year was bad. The winter will be bad, but not as bad. The hope is that by the spring, we will be in a strong position to manage this disease through testing, vaccines and antiviral therapies. Omicron has shown that all humans on this planet are in the same boat, and that the Pandemic will only be over when it is over in all parts of the world. Not only in Britain.
The University of Edinburgh has a chair in global public health.
