Is Omicron beginning of the end for Covid?

A mAss outbreak of the Omicron variant caused by a party in Norway is only causing mild disease, experts have said.

Up to 120 revellers were infected at the Louise Restaurant and Bar on the evening of November 26, and half of these have screened positive for the new variant.

But yesterday Norway’s leading epidemiologist said symptoms were milder and it might mark the end of the pandemic.

Tine Ravlo, an Oslo infectious diseases doctor, told The Daily Telegraph: ‘They have symptoms like fever, cough, headache, muscle pain, fatigue, but for now none of them have become severely ill and none of them have been treated in hospital.’

scatec, a solar power company, had booked a room at the restaurant for a Christmas party for its 120 staff.

But following the event, 70 of the 120 at the party got the virus, along with 50 other guests at the Oslo restaurant.

Norway’s state epidemiologist,

‘The hope is it’s getting milder’

Frode Forland, said the sheer number of people infected suggested Omicron was more infectious.

He added: ‘We don’t know if it will be more transmissible, but we suspect that is the case after the first investigations we have from south Africa, and also the spread we’ve seen from this outbreak in Oslo.’

The director of infectious diseases at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said he hoped the virus could be more mild and transmissible.

He added: ‘That is the hope. That is the best scenario we can have.

‘That it’s getting milder, most people will get it, and they will get a natural immunity. If that were the case, it may mark the beginning of the end for the Covid pandemic.

‘It might be that it has now replicated and mutated so many times that this is the optimal position from the virus’ point of view, to spread widely and not kill the hosts.

‘That’s what we’ve seen with other diseases beforehand. And of course, then it gets into more like an endemic phase.’

However Professor Adam Kucharski, from the London school of Hygiene and Tropical medicine, cautioned: ‘Arguably the laziest and most damaging cognitive error of the pandemic is not appreciating that lagged outcomes like deaths don’t reflect current threat in a rising epidemic. Remember: first UK Covid case was identified on 31 January 2020 – first death was reported on 5 march.

‘It will take time to understand exactly how much of a problem Omicron is, just as it took time to understand the origin variant, and Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta etc… But that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.’