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Early indications on Omicron ‘encouraging', says top US pandemic expert

First detected by South Africa, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has now spread to nearly 40 countries around the world.

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One of the leading pandemic experts in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci has said that early feedback on the severity of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 seem “a bit encouraging”. However, the top official also warned that more data was needed to be certain.

In an interview to a US TV news channel, Dr Fauci said that the new ‘variant of concern’ has a “transmission advantage" in South Africa, the country where Omicron was first detected. He noted that South Africa had a vertical spike in COVID-19 cases which were “almost exclusively Omicron.” He stated, “Though it's too early to really make any definitive statements about it, thus far, it does not look like there's a great degree of severity to it,” adding that, “thus far, the signals are a bit encouraging."

Experts fear that more severe cases could emerge in the coming week. Several studies are ongoing in laboratories to understand whether Omicron has more transmissibility compared to other strains, whether vaccines will remain effective and whether it would cause more severe illness. Lab results are awaited and are expected to come in the next few weeks.

The president of one of the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccine makers recently told another TV news channel that Omicron comes with a “real risk that we're going to see a decrease in effectiveness of the vaccines.”

Stephen Hoge, President of Moderna said, “Is it going to be the kind of thing that we saw with the Delta variant, which is, ultimately vaccines were still effective, or are we going to see something like a 50 percent decrease in efficacy, which would mean we need to reboot the vaccines.”

Nearly 40 countries have reported cases of Omicron thus far.

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