By James Macharia Chege and Josephine Mason
LONDON (Reuters) – Two vaccine makers said their immunizers protect against the Ômicron variant of the coronavirus, and data from the UK suggest it could cause proportionately fewer hospitalizations than the Delta strain, but public health experts cautioned that the battle against Covid-19 is far from over.
Similar encouraging signs of hospitalization rates emerged in South Africa on Wednesday, but the head of Africa’s main health agency echoed the World Health Organization (WHO) in warning that it was too early to draw broad conclusions about the Ômicron virulence.
“Let’s be careful not to extrapolate what we’re seeing in South Africa across the continent, or across the world,” said John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in a briefing to the media.
Coronavirus infections are rampant across much of the world now that the highly infectious Ômicron has spread, bringing new restrictions in many countries.
Identified last month in southern Africa and Hong Kong, the variant is rapidly becoming prevalent in most of Western Europe, including the UK, where new infections per day exceed 100,000.
But the rises in hospitalizations and deaths in South Africa and the UK since Ômicron’s spread look more gradual. At the same time, AstraZeneca and Novavax, as well as other vaccine makers, say their immunizers protect against the strain.
University of Edinburgh researchers who screened 22,205 Omicron patients said on Wednesday that the number who needed to be hospitalized was 68% lower than they would have expected, based on the rate of Delta-infected patients.
Researchers at Imperial College London said that, over the past two weeks, they have seen evidence of a 40% to 45% reduction in the risk of hospitalizations by Ômicron compared to Delta.
Raghib Ali, senior clinical research associate at Cambridge University, said scientists have warned that with British cases soaring, even a small proportion of hospitalizations could overwhelm the health care system.
But the UK data are encouraging and “may help justify the government’s decision not to extend restrictions on social gatherings over Christmas in England,” he said.
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