Omicron, Guess work so far

More transmissibility

Some vaccine escape

Some natural infection escape

Causing reinfections in SA in people that had had infection and vaccination

Mostly mild symptoms in the vaccinated

Effecting younger people

Sinovac recipients may do well

Global within the week

Lateral flow tests still work

Every vaccinated and unvaccinated person will encounter this variant

Tiredness, headache, body aches, scratchy throat, dry cough

Netherlands

https://www.dw.com/en/omicron-present...

Omicron present at least a week

Before 13 (out of 61) passengers from South Africa found to be omicron positive

National Institute for Public Health (RIVM)

https://www.rivm.nl/en

November 19th and 23rd

Omicron variant in two test samples

(South Africa announced they had identified omicron November 26th)

(First Belgium case, 24th November)

(Botswana on November 11th)

It is not yet clear whether the people concerned (in the earlier cases) had also been to southern Africa

Tracking down some 5,000 passengers from South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe

Michael Hoelscher, Department for Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Munich University Hospital

We're finding an increasing number of variant cases all around Europe, and in fact we believe that the introduction of those variants has been ongoing for a few weeks already

What we are also seeing is that there are now first cases of community transmission, so it's within Europe, and the travel bans will probably delay the spread of the disease a little bit but will not be able to hold it up

US

President Biden

Cause for concern not a cause for panic

Get boosted

No new US lockdown

Sequencing 80,000 samples per week

Moderna

No tweaked vaccine until 2022

Endemic with yearly vaccines

UK

13 England, 9 Scotland omicron cases

All 5 English cases linked to southern Africa

Scotland

Nine omicron cases so far

Scotland Chief Medical Officer Gregor Smith

Not aware of anyone dying of the omicron variant as of yet

Boosting boosters

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/inde...

Prime Minister, throw everything at it

Next Thursday

Finished by end of Jan, next 2 months

Sites all over the place

Boosters to all over 18

Gap between 2nd dose and boosters, cut to three months

From December 1, doctors, £15 per jab

£20 for Sunday and Bank Holiday

400 soldiers will help

The best thing to happen?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...

Professor Karl Lauterbach, clinical epidemiologist

(Germany's next health minister)

Could mean omicron it is optimised to infect, in line with how most respiratory viruses evolve

Professor Paul Hunter

The theory may prove to be true

? levels of protection from previous infection in SA

High levels of previous infection and vaccination, offering protection
Franco Locatelli, president of Italy's Higher Health Council

Not overly concerned by the new variant

May be more contagious but it is not more dangerous than other strains

The time it took to become predominant was much less compared to other variants

But we don't have any evidence to suggest it can provoke more serious illness or evade the protective effect of vaccines in a major way