Omicron will spread much more rapidly, warns Biden
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden warned on Thursday that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus will start to spread much more rapidly in the United States and urged Americans to get vaccinated or boosted.
“The only real protection is to get your shot,” he said, predicting “a winter of severe illness and death” for the unvaccinated.
He spoke as America is growing more and more nervous over the latest chapter of the nightmare that is the coronavirus pandemic. As of December 1, the average of new daily cases of infection was 86,000. On December 14, it had shot up to 117,000 an increase of 35%.
Biden stressed the importance of vaccinated people getting a booster and of those who have yet to be vaccinated receiving their first shot.
Health ministers from the G7 on Thursday called for international cooperation in the face of the Omicron strain, which they called the “biggest current threat to global public health”.
The outbreak linked to the new variant has spread globally, and more European nations are implementing travel restrictions.
A US government-appointed panel of medical experts on Thursday unanimously recommended mRNA Covid vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna over Johnson & Johnson’s shot, in light of its weaker protection and greater risks. The panel voted 15-0 in favour of the new guidance, which applies to everyone over 18 years of age. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky signed off on the measure Thursday evening.
Sputnik efficacy
Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is effective against the Omicron variant, the RIA news agency cited President Vladimir Putin as saying on Friday. Sputnik V is one of Russia’s four domestically approved vaccines.
However, a separate study said Covid-19 shots made by China’s state-owned Sinopharm and Johnson & Johnson, as well as the Sputnik vaccine developed by Russia, were found to produce little or no antibodies against Omicron.
Researchers at the University of Washington and Swiss drugmaker Humabs Biomed SA analysed the efficacy of six vaccines against the highly-infectious and most-mutated Covid variant.
Only three out of 13 people who has taken both doses of Sinopharm’s shot showed neutralising antibodies against Omicron. For J&J, this metric dropped to one out of 12 samples. None of the 11 people fully vaccinated with Sputnik generated such antibodies.
The study, which has been published as a preprint and is yet to be peer-reviewed, also found that the lowest reduction in protective antibodies come from a combination of prior infection and two doses of Pfizer’s mRNA shots. Antibody levels in this sub-set of people dropped fivefold, compared to 44-fold for those who took both the shots from Pfizer but didn’t have a history of Covid infection.
South Africa’s health minister said on Friday that the government believed that vaccines and high levels of prior Covid-19 infection were helping to keep disease milder in a wave driven by the Omicron variant.