Omicron variant, the risk of reinfection is higher than in the first wave: those vaccinated with the third dose are better able to avoid it
Omicron has one “substantial” ability to evade immunity from a previous contagion from Covid: this is what the first study on real cases revealed on the effect of the new variant of Covid-19. A fact that suggests that the new variant could cause a substantial wave of cases even in populations with high levels of antibodies.
Although only about a quarter of the South African population is fully vaccinated, the immunity given by natural contagion is high because the country has had several major waves of Covid. Well if the risk of reinfection in the Beta and Delta waves was lower than the first wave of cases in March 2020 (the one caused by the Wuhan strain of the virus), with the Omicron variant the risk of reinfection is 2.4 times greater compared to the first wave.
This has public health implications because it means that Omicron can spread even in a population with very high levels of natural immunity. The question now is what happens in a population where i vaccination rates are high. Research from the National Institutes of Health in the United States has shown that antibodies produced by Covid vaccines are more likely to recognize variations in virus spike protein compared to those generated by natural immunity; and that could mean who the people are fully vaccinated and maybe even ‘enhanced’ with the recall are able to ‘bypass’ Omicron. But it will still take weeks to find out.
The research results were published on the MedRxiv platform and not peer reviewed. Scientists have looked at nearly 2.8 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in South Africa since March 2020 and found that 35,670 were re-contagion cases. in the meantime the World Health Organization has sent an emergency team to South Africa, particularly in the province of Gauteng, the epicenter of the variant, to better understand how it spreads.
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