The new date is Dec 3, 2021.
Two studies out of South Africa this week show that the omicron variant of the coronaviruses is spreading twice as fast as the delta variant and that it is more likely to cause illness than the Covid-19 variant.
A health worker prepares to conduct a COVID-19 coronaviruses molecular test in the city. A photo by Luca Sola.
The images are from the same source.
The data from nine South African provinces shows that the omicron variant has spread more quickly than the delta variant.
Pearson told the New York Times that it was possible that the omicron variant was less transmissible than Delta.
According to a non-peer, South African researchers estimated Thursday that omicron is at least three times more likely to reinfect people who have recovered from a Covid infection than previous versions.
The National Institute For Communicable Diseases in South Africa says that the omicron variant accounted for more than 70% of all the genomes that were positive for Covid-19 in the month of November.
The data from South Africa appears to show what we have been seeing anecdotally, according to Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The variant has the ability to cause re-infections at a higher rate than has been seen with other versions.
16,095. South Africa reported 11,535 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday and 8,561 on Wednesday.
The key background.
Since the omicron variant was first identified in southern Africa, there has been a surge in covid-19 cases in South Africa. The transmissibility and severity of the disease caused by the variant remain unclear, despite the World Health Organization deeming it a "variant of concern" shortly after. South Africa's NCID said in a report Thursday that while omicron may be able to evade some immune protection, the protection against severe disease and death from vaccines should be less affected. According to data from Oxford University, less than 25% of South Africans have been fully vaccined against coronaviruses.
What to watch for.
The United States detected its first confirmed case of the omicron variant on Wednesday and has since found cases in six different states. As the variant spreads, it is not clear if infections will spike in the U.S. The key thing will be to figure out what is going on in South Africa, where there are different dynamics in terms of immunity from vaccine and prior infections. It is difficult to generalize what is happening in a place where only 25% of the population is fully vaccineed.
There is new evidence that shows omicron spreads twice as fast as the delta in South Africa.
