So, this happened late last week.
I suppose it was inevitable that a new Variant of Concern would pop up, although I have to say that the speed at which the news has spread, and how world governments have mobilised, has been quite remarkable.
Though it shouldn’t be a big surprise given how slow (on hindsight) countries globally reacted to the arrival of Delta earlier this year.
Once bitten, twice shy.
It was interesting to note that WHO skipped two Greek letters when naming this particular variant, and I can sort of guess what they must have gone through their minds.
Nu sounds too much like Mu; and Xi is, well, too politically loaded.
The key question now though is how bad will the situation get with Omicron, especially in the context of transmissibility, disease severity and the dreaded possibility of immune escape.
At this time, the answer seems to be: “We don’t know yet.” And it looks like it will be least a couple more weeks before the picture becomes clearer.
What we do know is that Omicron has been swiftly designated by the WHO as a Variant of Concern, without even being labeled as a less severe Variant of Interest and then “upgraded”.
To recap, here are the WHO definitions:
Variant of Interest (VOI)
A SARS-CoV-2 variant with genetic changes that are predicted or known to affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape; AND
Identified to cause significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters, in multiple countries with increasing relative prevalence alongside increasing number of cases over time, or other apparent epidemiological impacts to suggest an emerging risk to global public health. Variant of Concern (VOC)
A SARS-CoV-2 variant that meets the definition of a VOI and, through a comparative assessment, has been demonstrated to be associated with one or more of the following changes at a degree of global public health significance:
Increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology; OR
Increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation; OR
Decrease in effectiveness of public health and social measures or available diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics.The next few weeks are going to be rough while we wait for more data to surface.
So, buckle up folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
