South Africa’s new variant Omicron is expected to spread more infections and elude the immunity, suggests scientists.
Healthcare department of South Africa warns threefold higher risk of reinfection from the new coronavirus variant Omicron as compared to the prevailing Delta variant and Beta strain.
Reportedly, the recent findings by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) state that studies provided epidemiological proof that Omicron has the ability to elude immunity from previous infections.
Anne von Gottberg, Microbiologist at NICD expressed similar views at a news conference held online hosted by World Health Organization, suggesting that the surging COVID-19 reinfections owing to Omicron have been reported in South Africa.
As per credible reports, the South African government has reported an unexpected spike in the coronavirus infections from 312 cases to 11535 cases within ten days.
For the uninitiated, NICD along with a vast network of health organizations that conduct genome sequencing on samples, stated that Omicron will soon become the dominant variant of coronavirus across Africa.
Juliet Pulliam, SACEMA Director mentioned that the Omicron variant will spread across the entire provinces of South Africa maximum by mid-December, causing a surge in infections.
It has been reported that NICD’s has based its analysis on 2,796,982 people who tested positive out of which 35,670 cases were probably of reinfections.
As per sources, Omicron has no severe symptoms rather most of the infections mainly reported mild symptoms throughout the world.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), cases of the new variant Omicron have been detected in almost 24 countries across the world.
Furthermore, credibility of vaccines remains highly uncertain as top scientists throughout the globe report no assurance regarding protection against Omicron.