This is an experiment that happens in the real world because it is hard to test transmission in a lab. The researchers will use the tests to figure out how many of the covid-19 cases are due to omicron. If that percentage starts growing, it will be a sign that omicron is being transmitted faster.
The alpha variant appeared in the United Kingdom in 2020. It accounted for a rising share of British cases by the end of the year, and within a few months it dominated case loads in the rest of Europe and the US. Alpha was displaced by Delta. It took about four months from when the strains were introduced to account for most cases. If omicron follows suit, it will be the dominant strain by the spring of 2021.
It is strongly suggestive of a transmission advantage when we see replacement. It could be due to chance if it only happens in one place. He says the rise of omicron in South Africa doesn't prove that the variant is more transmissible.
It could take a month or more to get firm evidence for higher transmissibility. It takes about five to six days for a person to grow enough virus to spread. Researchers will need to observe multiple rounds of infections and spread to understand whether omicron is being transmitted faster.
Researchers can speed up the research if they extend the timelines backward. Doctors in Nigeria have said they found omicron in a sample. There were omicron cases in the Netherlands from mid-November. The data points could be earlier.
The human stage of the Pandemic is changing as well, and it is not the only Viruses changing. Omicron will face more varied conditions than any other variant yet, including countries where almost everyone is vaccine-free, where most people have already had covid-19, and countries like China and New Zealand. Omicron might take hold in some areas but not in others.
Does omicron cause more severe disease?
Initially, some South African doctors said the symptoms caused by the new variant seemed milder, but then there were reports of more hospital beds filling up. Nobody knows if omicron causes worse symptoms or not.
The problem is that omicron is new and it can take weeks for it to cause serious problems or even death. It is too early to say what the severity of the disease is. Christian Althaus is an epidemiologist in Bern.
The final answers will come from real-world data on people, including doctor's observations, hospital records, and death counts, but researchers can expose lab animals like mice or monkeys to omicron to measure disease severity.
The question of whether omicron causes worse disease, or different symptoms, will likely take a couple of months to answer.
Researchers are reminding the public about the dangers of wearing masks and isolation because of the uncertainty around omicron and the possibility that vaccines won't work well. There is no variant against which these interventions will not work.
Omicron is a sign of things to come according to him. It will be difficult in the next few months or years. He says that there will be new variant. Stock markets should not respond in a scared way. We will have to deal with that in the future.
