প্রকাশ: 09/12/2021
Early data indicates the Omicron Covid variant may more
easily reinfect people who have already had the virus or been vaccinated than
previous variants, but could also cause milder disease, the WHO said Wednesday.
“Emerging data from South Africa suggests increased risk of
reinfection with Omicron,” World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus told reporters, adding that “there is also some evidence that
Omicron causes milder disease than Delta”.
But he stressed that more data was needed before drawing
firm conclusions, and urged countries everywhere to boost their surveillance to
help provide a clearer picture of how Omicron is behaving.
The hopeful assessments came as global concern grew over the
heavily mutated variant, which has forced dozens of nations to re-impose border
restrictions and raised the possibility of a return to economically punishing
lockdowns.
Even if it does turn out that Omicron causes less severe
disease, Tedros warned against slacking off vigilance against the virus.
“Any complacency now will cost lives,” he warned.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan agreed, pointing out
that so far the data indicates the variant is “efficiently transmitting and
probably more efficiently transmitting even than the Delta variant.”
“That does not mean that the virus is unstoppable,” he said.
“But it means the virus is more efficient at transmitting
between human beings. And therefore we have to redouble our efforts to break
those chains of transmission to protect ourselves to protect others.”
Even if the new variant turns out to be less dangerous than
previous variants, if it transmits more rapidly, it could still sicken more
people, overburden health systems, “and more people die,” he said.
The WHO experts stressed the importance of vaccination,
highlighting that even if vaccines prove less effective against Omicron, as
some data indicates, they are still expected to provide significant protection
against severe disease.
Chief WHO scientist Soumya Swaminathan cautioned against
knee-jerk reactions to early studies hinting that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
may have reduced efficacy against the new variant.
She pointed out that the studies done so far were small and
that the reduction in the “neutralizing activity” varied dramatically between
different studies, from four to five-fold in some experiments to up to 40-fold
in others.
They also only looked at the neutralization of antibodies,
when “we know the immune system is much more complex than that,” she said.
“So I think it’s premature to conclude that this reduction
neutralizing activity would result in a significant reduction in vaccine
effectiveness,” she said. “We do not know that.”
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