By James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent
Image source, Getty ImagesThe world is being hit by a tsunami by Omicron. Scientists, politicians and indeed all of us are struggling with what it means for our lives.
The restrictions are being tightened in parts of the UK and other European countries to tackle the new variant.
There is a constant flow of new information – some worrying, some positive. So where do we stand?
It’s not last winter
It’s easy to forget, but we’re a much brighter place than this time last year, where many of us could not meet the family on Christmas day.
The “Christmas bubble” rules meant that in parts of the country you could only spend the day with those you lived with. But there were limits to the size of assemblies across the UK.
The emergence of the Alpha variant in late 2020 led to lockdowns in November and a long one in the new year when the vaccination program was only just underway.
The rules currently in place or coming into force on Christmas Day in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are much gentler in comparison.
Omicron is less serious
If you catch Omicron, you are less likely to get seriously ill than with previous variants.
Studies from around the world paint a consistent picture that Omicron is milder than the Delta variant, with a 30-70% lower chance of people being infected ending up in hospital.
Omicron may cause cold-level symptoms such as sore throat, runny nose and headache, but this does not mean that it will be mild for everyone and some will still be seriously ill.
Changes in the virus appear to have made it less dangerous, but most of the reduced severity is due to immunity due to vaccination and previous outbreaks of Covid.
But Omicron is spreading very fast
The concern is that the severity is only half the equation if you worry about whether the hospitals can handle it.
If Omicron is half as likely to land you in the hospital, but twice as many people are infected, then the two cancel and you’re back to square one.
And Omicron’s real talent is to infect humans. It spreads faster than other variants and can bypass some of the immune protection from vaccines and previous infections.
The UK has record levels of Covid with confirmed cases on Thursday reaching almost 120,000 – and this is an underestimation of what’s really going on as not everyone gets a test and people who catch it more than once are not included in the numbers .
We are not sure what will happen when Omicron hits the elderly
Old age has always been the biggest risk factor for getting seriously ill from Covid.
In the UK, most Omicron cases and people who end up in hospital are under the age of 40, so we do not know for sure what will happen when it reaches old and vulnerable populations.
Omicron’s ability to partially evade immunity means that there is a possibility that more elderly people will be infected than during the Delta wave.
Huge numbers have been increased, but protection is declining
Two doses of a vaccine provide little protection against catching Omicron, which led to a massive expansion of the booster campaign.
Now more than 31 million people in the UK have improved their immune systems.
However, the protection against catching Omicron seems to decrease after about 10 weeks. Protection against serious illness is likely to last much longer.
But we have antiviral drugs now
New medicine should keep even more patients out of the hospital.
They are given to people who are at high risk for Covid, including cancer patients and people who have had an organ transplant.
Molnupiravir is an antiviral drug that interferes with the ability of Omicron to replicate inside our bodies and reduces hospitalization by 30%. Sotrovimab is an antibody treatment that adheres to the virus and reduces hospital visits by 79%.
Both suppress the virus, which buys time for the immune system to respond.
Image source, Getty ImagesThe NHS and staff are already feeling the strain
An increase in Omicron could place more people in the hospital while removing the people needed to take care of them.
The sheer number of people capturing Omicron alone also affects doctors, nurses and the rest of the NHS workforce, as they also need to be isolated.
Nearly 19,000 NHS employees were free with Covid on December 19, which is 54% higher than the week before.
Meanwhile, NHS Providers, which represents hospital and ambulance services in the UK, say the health service is facing its busiest Christmas period ever. And that overall, 94.5% of adult beds were occupied against 89% last year.
The next few weeks are important
The question is whether everything to our advantage – milder, antiviral drugs, boosters – is enough to deal with a variant that is spreading faster than anything we have seen before.
Or will controlling the Omicron wave require more restrictions?
The speed at which this is happening means that we will very quickly know how this is going to shake down.
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