South African Experts Trust Omicron Vaccine Response

Leading experts in the fight against the pandemic in South Africa were cautiously optimistic about the ability of existing vaccines to prevent disease. COVID-19 grave for the new variant omicron, although they expect a rapid increase in infections for the next few days.

“Based on what we know, and how other variants of concern have reacted to vaccine immunity, we can expect that we will still see high effectiveness against hospitalization and severe disease,” said Professor Salim Abdool Karim, one of the scientists. leaders regarding COVID-19 in South Africa.

“Vaccine protection is likely to remain strong. We do not know this definitively, studies are being done, but based on what we do know, we can expect that this is the likely scenario, that vaccines will hold up well in terms of preventing hospitalizations because they depend more on the immunity of patients. T cells and less of the antibodies, ”he added.

According to this expert, South Africa will be able to offer more data in two to three weeks, but current predictions are mainly based on experience with mutations that were already present in other previous variants – such as alpha, beta, gamma and delta – that Although they possessed “some degree of escape from the previous immune response,” severe cases could still be combated with vaccines.

In addition, of the increasing cases that are being seen these days in South Africa and that experts point out that they could be due to omicron, for the moment the positives and, above all, hospitalizations affected much more, by far, unvaccinated people .

Ómicron does seem more likely to escape the immunity of antibodies naturally generated by previous infections, so a higher rate of reinfection is expected in unvaccinated people.

Despite everything, Karim also stressed that the new variant has a high number of mutations and that, although some are known, others are totally new and there is no “idea” yet of their impact.

The apparent greater transmissibility of this new variant does seem relatively safe and, therefore, South African experts predict that in the coming days South Africa will see a rapid increase in the number of cases.

In fact, Karim expects that the around 2,500 to 3,000 new daily cases that the country has been counting in recent days, by the end of this week will already approach 10,000.

Regarding the severity and clinical effects, although no “red flag” has yet been raised, according to experts, the data are still “anecdotal” and also biased by factors such as that most of the new cases detected in South Africa they were among young people.

“The fear of variations should not drive us to despair,” said South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla, who reiterated his criticism of the cascade of international restrictions on southern Africa as “unjustified”.

The discovery of this new variant of the coronavirus, identified as B.1.1.529 and baptized with the Greek letter omicron by the World Health Organization (WHO), was announced last Thursday by scientists and health authorities in South Africa and is characterized by have a high number of mutations.

Numerous countries around the world have already confirmed cases of this variant.