The Omicron variant of the coronavirus, just six weeks after its appearance on the international scene, is breaking daily records for cases in one country after another and in Cyprus - with scientists still unsure how serious this new pandemic wave will turn out to be.
It is already apparent that the new strain of the virus is behaving very differently from the previous ones, both because it is different itself and because it is encountering a different environment. Greater numbers of people are now infected or quarantined than ever before, with all that this implies for the normal functioning of society and the economy. Unlike in previous phases of the pandemic, however, most governments are not resorting to severe measures and are 'plodding along', thanks both to good evidence that vaccines continue to protect against the severe disease and to early indications that Omicron is less likely to cause severe clinical symptoms and severe disease than Delta.
Scientists around the world, according to the prestigious international journal Science, are not yet in a position to predict the final outcome of Omicron, and cannot rule out that even if Omicron causes less severe cases of Covid-19, already Delta-burdened hospitals will eventually be overwhelmed. Already in several countries such as the US, an upward trend in hospital admissions has been recorded in recent days. For now, however, according to the New York Times, hospitals seem to be filling their intensive care units (ICUs) more slowly than their Covid-19 beds.
Virologists, epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists, microbiologists and other scientists are watching anxiously and hoping that the new wave will peak soon and then begin to ebb, without overwhelming ICUs in the meantime. So far, a smaller proportion of hospitalizations than in previous pandemic waves are proving so severe that patients are ending up in ICUs. However, in several developed countries, many hospitals are in crisis conditions again, this time due to a shortage of health personnel because of increased Omicron cases, which has also happened in Greek hospitals.
"At the beginning of the pandemic we were worried about running out of things like respirators. Now the real problem is staff shortages," said infectious disease internist Dr. Ryan Mavs of Wake Forest Medical School in North Carolina.
The general consensus among doctors, however, is that this Covid-19 wave due to Omicron is different from the previous one in Delta. Someone infected with the new variant is much less likely to become seriously ill, although so many are infected that a not insignificant number eventually need some treatment with hospitalization, albeit of shorter duration than with Delta or the Alpha variant."
"On average, and I emphasize average, Omicron cases are less severe. And that's obviously good news for our patients," said Dr. James Maser, chief of pathology at Huston Methodist Hospital in Texas.
[BR][BR]So the burden so far is lighter in ICUs and heavier in other hospital units, which are pressured by the ever-increasing number of admissions to single beds, which also increases the risk of coronavirus infection of other patients. As an example, 50% to 65% of patients in some New York hospitals are admitted to the hospital for another reason and subsequently diagnosed as coronavirus positive. Having so many hospitalized patients with asymptomatic Covid-19, which is then diagnosed incidentally by physicians, poses a risk to other hospital patients."
"And these patients need to be put into isolation. They need to be treated as patients who may transmit Covid-19 in the hospital. And when you have less staff, then you really have a problem. We hope not to cancel scheduled surgeries, but we're already looking into it," said infectious disease specialist Dr. Carlos del Rio of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Admissions to hospitals in New York and other US states like Maryland have already surpassed those at the peak of last winter. "We're seeing an increase in the number of admissions, but we're not sending as many patients to the ICU, nor are we intubating as many. In fact, most of our patients who come to the ER who test positive for coronavirus are then discharged," said Dr. Rahul Sharma, chief of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital.
While it's still too early for firm predictions, clinical evidence from hospitals so far confirms initial laboratory studies that Omicron is inherently milder and rarely causes pneumonia. In part this is because it infects people who already have some immunity either through vaccination or previous Covid-19 infection. The vast majority of Omicron patients in ICUs in the US and beyond are unvaccinated, immunocompromised or otherwise susceptible.
Given the time lag between hospital admissions and ICU admissions, the latter are expected to increase in the coming weeks, according to US experts. The fact that there is no quick way for doctors to know if a new patient is infected with a Delta or Omicron variant often forces them to work in the "dark."
On the other hand, Greek Professor Aris Katzourakis of the University of Oxford, an expert on virus evolution, warns that new variants of the coronavirus may well emerge with a similar capacity for immune escape and spread like Omicron, but they will also be more deadly. And this new variant may already be under the radar. "There are still many letters in the Greek alphabet that can
Source: APE-MPE
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
Source
