Omicron news

[littlebabyjesus]

Still not entirely reassuring in the scenario where the case number reach over 10x their previous highs though... which I guess is why everyone is hoping that the peaks are shown to happen relatively early.

There are signs that Gauteng is peaking. Its active case number has been hovering around 80,000 for the last few days. Meanwhile other regions in SA are a bit behind Gauteng so still in the process of rapidly increasing, notably KwaZulu Natal.

I'm not sure a scenario with x10 cases is realistic.

The period in which growth is near-exponential (never exactly exponential - you don't get that in nature as you need unlimited resources) is scary cos you can't tell when it will level off. In Gauteng province, at least, that period does appear to be at an end.

 

[elbows]

Chris Whitty warns against over-interpreting early Omicron data

The chief medical officer said even if the new variant is milder, its ability to spread faster means there could still be an issue.

www.independent.co.uk

England’s top medic has warned that early data from South Africa on the Omicron variant should be treated with caution as there is a danger people have over-interpreted it to mean there is no problem.

Professor Chris Whitty said what is lacking currently is “clear data on some of the really key questions”.

The chief medical officer said even if the new variant is milder, its ability to spread faster means there could still be an issue.

He said it is also important to note that immunity in South Africa is “far higher” in the face of this wave, due to a prior Delta wave and the country’s vaccination programme, adding that that makes their lower hospitalisation rate so far “unsurprising”.

He stated that he remains concerned there will be a problem with Omicron, but the exact nature of it is currently unknown.

He said: “That doesn’t mean that there isn’t some degree of slightly milder disease, that is possible. But I just think there’s a danger people have over-interpreted this to say, ‘this is not a problem and what are we worrying about?’

Dr Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, said the analysis covered just three weeks of data and warned that it was important to “avoid inferring too much right now from any national scenario”.

 

[elbows]

There are signs that Gauteng is peaking. Its active case number has been hovering around 80,000 for the last few days. Meanwhile other regions in SA are a bit behind Gauteng so still in the process of rapidly increasing, notably KwaZulu Natal.

I'm not sure a scenario with x10 cases is realistic.

They have data lag, had some IT problems some time ago which cased a backlog, and the extent to which that has now cleared is unknown to me. They also had a national holiday yesterday.

We may well anticipate a sharper, narrower peak due to the differences in transmissibility this time, but I dont want to overinterpret the current data from South Africa at all.

 

[elbows]

Early estimate caveats apply to this analysis, but its something:

Booster at least 80% effective against severe Omicron

Preliminary estimates by researchers suggest the top-up shot should help keep many people out of hospital.

www.bbc.co.uk

UK researchers have analysed the likely impact that a Covid booster shot will have on Omicron and say it could provide around 85% protection against severe illness.

The protection is a bit less than vaccines gave against earlier versions of Covid.

But it means the top-up dose should still keep many people out of hospital.

The modelling, from the team at Imperial College London, is based on limited information on Omicron.

The researchers say there is a high degree of uncertainty until more real world information is gathered about this new variant that is spreading quickly.

Experts are still trying to figure out how mild or severe Omicron will turn out to be.

'a bit less' is feeble language so I will dig into the details myself as soon as I have time,.

 

[elbows]

Other stuff below, as I've not found the vaccine protection against severe disease stuff yet. These numbers have big, horrible implications.

Controlling for vaccine status, age, sex, ethnicity, asymptomatic status, region and specimen date, Omicron was associated with a 5.40 (95% CI: 4.38-6.63) fold higher risk of reinfection compared with Delta. To put this into context, in the pre-Omicron era, the UK “SIREN” study of COVID infection in healthcare workers estimated that prior infection afforded 85% protection against a second COVID infection over 6 months. The reinfection risk estimated in the current study suggests this protection has fallen to 19% (95%CI: 0-27%) against an Omicron infection.

Depending on the estimates used for vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the Delta variant, this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0% and 20% after two doses, and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose. Similar estimates were obtained using genotype data, albeit with greater uncertainty.

Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London said: “This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which Omicron can evade prior immunity given by both infection or vaccination. This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health.”

Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses | Imperial News | Imperial College London

The Omicron variant largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses according to the latest Imperial modelling.

www.imperial.ac.uk

 

[elbows]

I didnt quote the bit about severity because its based on a very limited amount of data, but with that said here it is:

The study finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection. However, hospitalisation data remains very limited at this time.

 

[2hats]

Also note an alternative possibility to the 'immunocompromised human host' possibility.

Rodents, more specifically mice.

#443

Actually, it's the post just before that one that has the more compelling evidence.

 

[elbows]

Thanks. 2hats have you by any chance found the Imperial document that deals with the vaccine protection against severe disease estimate?

 

[elbows]

Ah here it is. Very preliminary.

The researchers also find that this reduction in neutralising antibodies could impact vaccine efficacy against severe disease. In a worst-case scenario where the decay rate after a booster dose is the same as that observed after the first 2 doses, the study predicts that vaccine efficacy against severe disease (hospitalisation) may drop from 96.5% (95% CrI 96.1%–96.8%) against Delta to 80.1% (76.3%–83.02) against Omicron by 60 days after the primary vaccine course followed by a booster of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine if antibodies decay at the same rate following the booster as observed following the primary vaccine course. If this rate of decay is half that rate, the drop is estimated to be from 97.6% (95% CrI 97.4%-97.9%) against Delta to 85.9% (95% CrI 83.1%-88.3%) against Omicron. However, this could be further moderated by the increased longevity of T cell-mediated immunity.

The researchers say that whilst these numbers are currently associated with a high degree of uncertainty, they indicate that Omicron-variant specific vaccines and/or further boosters are likely to be needed to restore protection.

The researchers note that we still do not know how severe the disease caused by the Omicron variant is compared to disease caused by previous variants.

Boosters vital to mitigate impact of Omicron, but may lose some effectiveness | Imperial News | Imperial College London

Levels of neutralizing antibody to prevent Omicron infection reduced and vaccine efficacy against severe disease predicted to drop says new report.

www.imperial.ac.uk

 

[Griff]

Encouraging news from South Africa.

South Africa Hospitalisations Down

 

[2hats]

Thanks. 2hats have you by any chance found the Imperial document that deals with the vaccine protection against severe disease estimate?

It's all part of report 49.

 

[elbows]

Encouraging news from South Africa.

South Africa Hospitalisations Down

But note this bit:

Scientists have cautioned that other nations may have a different experience to South Africa as the country’s population is young compared with developed nations. Between 70% and 80% of citizens may also have had a prior Covid-19 infection, according to antibody surveys, meaning they could have some level of protection.

 

[elbows]

At least their wastewater analysis offers some clues about their actual trend in cases in a particular area:

A wastewater analysis carried out by the South African Medical Research Council for the week ended Dec. 10 showed a declining proportion of viral particles for two successive weeks at the plant that treats water draining from central Pretoria.

 

[danny la rouge]

Have we done pronunciation yet?

I thought omicron (literally micro o) in Ancient Greek was “oh”.

Whereas omega (literally mega o) in Ancient Greek was “aw”.

So why has everyone seemingly settled on aw-micron instead of oh-micron?

 

[elbows]

Early estimate caveats apply to this analysis, but its something:

Booster at least 80% effective against severe Omicron

Preliminary estimates by researchers suggest the top-up shot should help keep many people out of hospital.

www.bbc.co.uk

'a bit less' is feeble language so I will dig into the details myself as soon as I have time,.

Not sure if the following quote was originally part of the article as I was in a rush earlier and I believe they updated the article since then, but I'll certainly quote this bit now:

Dr Clive Dix, former chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, said: "There is a huge amount of uncertainty in these modelled estimates and we can only be confident about the impact of boosters against Omicron when we have another month of real-world data on hospitalisation, ICU [intensive care] numbers and deaths.

"It remains the case that we still need to get vaccines current and future to the whole world."

 

[Pickman's model]

Not sure if the following quote was originally part of the article as I was in a rush earlier and I believe they updated the article since then, but I'll certainly quote this bit now:

let's just hope that we don't move on to pi or rho while they are deliberating

 

[andysays]

Have we done pronunciation yet?

I thought omicron (literally micro o) in Ancient Greek was “oh”.

Whereas omega (literally mega o) in Ancient Greek was “aw”.

So why has everyone seemingly settled on aw-micron instead of oh-micron?

There may be an issue with regional variations in pronunciation, but I've been pronouncing omicron like omnivore, and pronounce omega with more of a long "oh" sound.

ETA and I was unaware of the Greek letter omicron until very recently

 

[danny la rouge]

There may be an issue with regional variations in pronunciation, but I've been pronouncing omicron like omnivore, and pronounce omega with more of a long "oh" sound.

I was the opposite, but now I’m confused. I am not a scholar of Ancient Greek, though.

 

[andysays]

I was the opposite, but now I’m confused. I am not a scholar of Ancient Greek, though.

Me neither (see edit above)

 

[teuchter]

In case anyone hadn't noticed, we don't live in Ancient Greece.

 

[cupid_stunt]

In case anyone hadn't noticed, we don't live in Ancient Greece.

 

[xenon]

I understand the need for erring on the side of caution. Not over interpreting available data from SA.

But, typethinking:

Part of the explanation for relatively low hospitalisation figures, is because they've had so many cases of delta and prior beta, that this may afford some immunity.

Haven't we been having thousands of cases of delta for months, why would this not do the same?

Or is simply question of scale. SA has had delta so much worse because of lower vaccination rates?

What about the large number of imuno compromised HIV infected people in SA, has that been factored in?

As an aside, the anti vaccers will love the idea that boosters against omicron aren't as affective as infection.

 

[xenon]

I've been pronouncing omicron as
Oh micron.

 

[prunus]

I've been pronouncing omicron as
Oh micron.

I’ve always pronounced it as

Om as in Tom
ic as in thick
ron as in a-do-ron-ron.

Om-ic[k]-ron.

Although I know ohm-ic-ron would be more accurate.

 

[elbows]

I understand the need for erring on the side of caution. Not over interpreting available data from SA.

But, typethinking:

Part of the explanation for relatively low hospitalisation figures, is because they've had so many cases of delta and prior beta, that this may afford some immunity.

Haven't we been having thousands of cases of delta for months, why would this not do the same?

Or is simply question of scale. SA has had delta so much worse because of lower vaccination rates?

What about the large number of imuno compromised HIV infected people in SA, has that been factored in?

As an aside, the anti vaccers will love the idea that boosters against omicron aren't as affective as infection.

As per a news item I quoted earlier, for South Africa it was said that between 70% and 80% of citizens may also have had a prior Covid-19 infection, according to antibody surveys, meaning they could have some level of protection.

I dont have a nice, tidy number for the UK or for England. Studies of things like blood donors here have tended to show antibodies from previous infections at rates in the 20 something percent range. There are limitations to such estimates and I dont really have a percentage estimate for prior infections here in mind, and its not something that the press or the authorities spend much time going on about here either. Especially since such antibodies wane over time.

One thing that seems clear is that the vastly different sie of older population in the UK compared to South Africa means that in theory that country could perhaps have 'afforded' to let that many infections happen there without totally destroying the healthcare system, and the UK could not do that.

 

[two sheds]

'aw' is american (usually)
'oh' is british


there's a short bbc piece somewhere

How do you say Omicron?

Omicron is the 13th variant of the Covid-19 virus to receive a Greek name but the pronunciation is up for debate.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[two sheds]

unless you're Biden and some others when it's omnicrom

 

[teuchter]

Remember the emphasis must go on the second syllable. If it sounds like an Irish surname then that's correct.

 

[elbows]

Most of my remaining hopes in regarding a less than horrific Omicron situation outcome comes down to protection from things like T cells, stuff that is harder to measure and where we are only likely to discover the truth via what actually happens in practice with this wave.

I note that 2hats has recently pointed to something on that front: Covid Mutations

 

[Supine]

Oh Mick Ron