The omicron variant is already in almost 60 countries, but mild cases abound

A total of 57 countries have already detected cases of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus, although many of them without symptoms or mild, highlights the World Health Organization (WHO) in a report where it warns about the high possibility of reinfection that it seems to have the new strain.

The organization’s weekly epidemiological report highlights that the 212 confirmed cases in 18 European Union (EU) countries were in people with mild or even asymptomatic symptoms.

The WHO warns however that although the omicron variant may cause fewer serious cases than the delta (currently predominant) it could increase hospitalizations and deaths if, as is feared, it is more contagious and causes more infections in general.

In the last 60 days, of the 900,000 COVID-19 cases analyzed by the GISAID global laboratory network, more than 99% are still caused by the delta variant of the coronavirus, and only 713 (0.1%) belong to omicron.

However, that number is considerably higher than that indicated by the WHO a week ago (when GISAID had identified 14 cases of omicron) and the variant already outnumbers others previously detected, such as alpha or gamma.

The WHO cites forecasts from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, which expects omicron to become the dominant variant in the EU (more than 50% of cases) between January and March 2022, depending on the level of transmissibility. that I end up having.

The WHO highlights the strong increase in cases in southern African countries, the region where omicron was first detected: not only South Africa, where cases have doubled in a week (111% more), but Eswatini (1,990%), Zimbabwe (1,361%), Mozambique (1,207%), Namibia (681%) and Lesotho (219%).

However, the report underlines that these strong increases could be related to the greater number of diagnostic tests that have been carried out in these countries in recent weeks due to the alarm over the omicron variant.

One of the points of greatest concern of the new variant is its apparently high level of reinfection, that is, the ability to infect people who have already had the disease before and had therefore developed natural antibodies against the coronavirus.

The WHO emphasizes in this sense that the variant “appears to be spreading rapidly in a highly immunized population such as that of South Africa”.

Although the vaccination rate against COVID in South Africa is low (around 35%), the WHO believes that the country has an immunization level of its adults between 60% and 80%, due to the high number of people who are estimated to have passed the disease.

The WHO report still does not shed light on the possible effect of the new variant in anticovid vaccines, but notes that treatments used in severe cases of the disease (corticosteroids, interleukin-6 antagonists) seem to continue to work against this strain.