Omicron Update

In South Africa, the exponential rise in the number of infections has hit around 3 million. It has been suggested that many of these cases, involve people reinfected by Covid19. More than 100 cases have been reported in England. More than 50% of these involved people who had been double vaccinated against the virus. Omicron has now been found in most countries, where variants are assessed. The variant has, for example, been recorded in 5 US States. These are very early days. We can, however, be certain of three things about the Omicron variant. These are a) attempts to prevent the spread of the variant have been largely unsuccessful; b) Omicron is highly transmissible and c) this version of Sars-CoV-2 (as feared) appears to be able to evade some of the body's immune mechanisms. Neither infection nor application of vaccines, offer complete protection against Omicron. We really do need to slow the production of new viral variants. That can only be done by considerably ramping up vaccination programmes in all parts of the globe.