The waiting game: The latest we know about Omicron

The waiting game: The latest we know about Omicron

 

As we all wait to see how the new Omicron variant will impact the pandemic, I had a chance to speak with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last week -- and I asked her about her concerns over this new variant.\ While she said it’s possible Omicron could overtake Delta as the dominant strain, it’s still really too early to say. “What we do know is that early data, and even mutation data, are telling us that this may well be a more transmissible variant than Delta. This is going to take some time to sort out. We are prepared, though,” she told me. Walensky said public health agencies around the country are sequencing samples to track where this new variant might be. “We will be following that very carefully,” she said.\ One report from South African researchers shows some evidence that people who had been infected once with coronavirus were more likely to be reinfected with the Omicron variant than with the Beta or Delta variants. They said it's too soon to know for sure, but a recent spike in second infections indicates to them that Omicron is more likely to reinfect people. But early reports from doctors in the South African province where Omicron was first detected report that many of the hospitalized cases they are seeing are mild disease, with 70% of patients not requiring oxygen, and hospital stays for these Covid patients having “a much shorter average length of the stay of 2.8 days” relative to patients infected with other variants. It's a hopeful sign, but we still have to follow and track the data.