Even as the globe faces skyrocketing cases right before Christmas, the new Omicron variety took only a few weeks to live up to alarming warnings about how highly contagious it is. Scientists don’t yet know if it produces more severe disease.
“Everything is riskier now because Omicron is so much more contagious,” said Dr S Wesley Long, who directs the testing lab at Houston Methodist Hospital — and over the past week has cancelled numerous plans to avoid exposure.
Omicron now is the dominant variant in the US, federal health officials said Monday, accounting for about three-quarters of new infections last week.
The speed that it’s outpacing the also very contagious delta variant is astonishing public health officials. In three weeks, Omicron now makes up 80% of new symptomatic cases diagnosed by Houston Methodist’s testing sites. It took the delta variant three months to reach that level, Long said.
The mutant’s ability to spread faster and evade immunity came at a bad time — right as travel increased and many people let down their guard. But what the Omicron wave will mean for the world is still unclear because so many questions remain unanswered.
After a booster, the protection against an Omicron infection still appears about 20% less than protection against the delta variant, said Dr Egon Ozer of Northwestern University.
But if the virus gets past that first line of defence, the vaccinated have additional layers of protection.
“The vaccines are going to protect you against severe disease, hospitalization and death,” said Houston Methodist’s Long. “And that’s really the most important thing.”
