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COVID: Omicron is unstoppable now

Experts in Germany say we're unprepared for the inevitable: Hundreds of thousands of omicron infections per day. That is how infectious the new variant is.



Omicron is more infectious than other coronavirus variants and it can evade our immune response system

So, that's that: It won't be a Merry Christmas after all.

It's only a matter of time before we're hit by the full force of omicron infections — a case of, "not if, but when." And that when won't take long. That's what three of Germany's top researchers said during a virtual nationwide press briefing Wednesday (15.12.2021).

Christoph Neumann-Haefelin, an immunologist at the University Medical Center Freiburg, said omicron will likely become the dominant variant of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, by mid-January — superseding the delta variant, which until now has been one of the most infectious strains since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Neumann-Haefelin predicts that infection rates will shoot up dramatically — possibly to hundreds of thousands per day.

That dark prognosis is based on international data that German researchers have been studying. Take for instance the United Kingdom, where omicron infection rates are doubling every two to three days.

Dirk Brockmann, a physicist at Humboldt University of Berlin, says that's a factor of three-to-four-times higher than infection rates with previous variants.

Experts in the UK estimate new omicron infections could shoot up to as many as 400,000-to-700,000 cases per day.


They think it's possible that 20-34 million people could become infected with omicron between now (December 2021) and April 2022 — that's about half of the UK population — despite reinforced rules on social distancing, medical masks, school closures and more.

"I'd be surprised if we didn't see a similar situation here in Germany," said Brockmann.
Governments must act now

Brockmann says politicians have to act immediately, setting up emergency plans for a range of scenarios and then putting them into action.

"We have to slow the spread of the virus to limit the damage," according to Brockmann. But, he admits, it will be impossible to stop it outright.

Germany's experts say communities will have to reduce social contacts and people's movements drastically, similar to what they did in the very first lockdowns.

"But we'll have to do a whole lot more given the speed with which this variant is spreading," Brockmann said.

At risk even if you're boosted

Omicron is not only more infectious than other variants of the coronavirus, it can also evade our human immune responses — what experts call "immune escape."

That means people who are double jabbed and even those who have had booster shots, can still get infected.

A booster jab will pump up your protection to 70-75% and it will also reduce your risk of a severe infection but that could also lend you a false sense of security, said Sandra Ciesek, director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University Hospital Frankfurt.

Ciesek said while it was important to get the unvaccinated vaccinated, first jabs would not be enough to fight off omicron.

"It takes many weeks for the immune system to develop a defense," she said. "The virus moves faster than that."
Omicron more dangerous than people think

Ciesek went on to say that omicron was likely to be just as dangerous as other variants of the virus — despite some reports suggesting it may only cause mild infections.

Initial data from the UK and Denmark show that hospitalization rates for people infected with omicron are not much different from those infected with the delta variant.

At the start of the omicron wave, reports from South Africa gave hope that the variant was less dangerous than delta, as many people there experienced only mild infections.

But since then, an increasing number of people infected with omicron have had to be hospitalized. The UK was the first country to report a death with omicron.

Ciesek said it was hard to compare the European situation with that in South Africa, where the population is on average younger, and where many people have had a previous coronavirus infection.

Health systems may collapse

Experts also warn that if infection rates continue to rise dramatically, health systems may well collapse.

Take, for example, the UK again: Estimated hospitalizations of between 3-5,000 people would put a strain on the "entire machinery," said Brockmann.

Many hospitals are struggling as it is and they won't be able to accept many more patients, especially as more patients mean higher risk of medical personnel getting infected as well.

Brockmann said we could see a cascade of effects, not all of them predictable. So researchers are calling on politicians to act decisively — "Time is running out," said Brockmann.

Ciesek, too, said she felt that Germany was ill-prepared, adding that she was very concerned about the situation.

Granted, these are worst-case scenarios but the three experts agreed it won't be enough to just hope omicron shows itself to be less dangerous than other variants.

Neumann-Haefelin said such wishful thinking would be akin to "walking into a catastrophe with open eyes."

This article was translated from German by Zulfikar Abbany

Edited by: Fabian Schmidt

Omicron variant multiplies 70 times faster in airways than Delta: study

By Nancy Lapid Reuters
Posted December 16, 2021 

WATCH: Omicron raising questions about holiday plans

Major differences in how efficiently Omicron and other variants of the coronavirus multiply may help predict Omicron’s effects, researchers said on Wednesday.

Compared to the earlier Delta variant, Omicron multiplies itself 70 times more quickly in tissues that line airway passages, which may facilitate person-to-person spread, they said. But in lung tissues, Omicron replicates 10 times more slowly than the original version of the coronavirus, which might contribute to less-severe illness.

A formal report of the findings is under peer review for publication and has not been released by the research team. In a news release issued by Hong Kong University, study leader Dr. Michael Chan Chi-wai said, “It is important to note that the severity of disease in humans is not determined only by virus replication” but also by each person’s immune response to the infection, which sometimes evolves into life-threatening inflammation.

Chan added, “By infecting many more people, a very infectious virus may cause more severe disease and death even though the virus itself may be less pathogenic. Therefore, taken together with our recent studies showing that the Omicron variant can partially escape immunity from vaccines and past infection, the overall threat from Omicron variant is likely to be very significant.”

Omicron grips cells more tightly, withstands some antibodies

A structural model of how the Omicron variant attaches to cells and antibodies sheds light on its behavior and will help in designing neutralizing antibodies, according to researchers.

Using computer models of the spike protein on Omicron’s surface, they analyzed molecular interactions occurring when the spike grabs onto a cell-surface protein called ACE2, the virus’s gateway into the cell.

READ MORE: Omicron variant might make COVID-19 vaccines less effective, WHO warns

Metaphorically, the original virus had a handshake with ACE2, but Omicron’s grip “looks more like a couple holding hands with their fingers entwined,” said Joseph Lubin of Rutgers University in New Jersey. The “molecular anatomy” of the grip may assist in explaining how Omicron’s mutations cooperate to help it infect cells, Lubin added.

The research team also modeled the spike with different classes of antibodies trying to attack it. The antibodies attack from different angles, “like a football team’s defense might tackle a ball carrier,” with one person grabbing from behind, another from the front, Lubin said. Some antibodies “appear likely to get shaken off” while others are likely to remain effective. Booster vaccines raise antibody levels, resulting in “more defenders,” which might compensate to some extent for “a weaker grip of an individual antibody,” Lubin said.

1:17 COVID-19: WHO warns of dismissing the Omicron variant as being ‘mild’, calls for stronger measures

The findings, posted on Monday on the website bioRxiv ahead of peer review, need to be verified, “particularly with real-world samples from people,” Lubin said. “While our molecular structure predictions are by no means a final word on Omicron, (we hope) they enable a faster and more effective response from the global community.”

Four in 10 infected people may unknowingly spread virus

Infected people who show no symptoms might be contributing significantly to transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, given that they account for 40.5% of confirmed infections worldwide, according to a study published online Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open.

READ MORE: Omicron is raging in the U.K. What can Canada learn?

The researchers pooled data from 77 earlier studies involving a total of 19,884 individuals with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections. They found that among infected people in the general community, about 40% were asymptomatic, as were 54% of infected pregnant women, 53% of infected air or cruise travelers, 48% of infected nursing home residents or staff and 30% of infected healthcare workers or hospitalized patients.

The pooled percentage of asymptomatic infections was about 46% in North America, 44% in Europe and 28% in Asia.

“The high percentage of asymptomatic infections highlights the potential transmission risk of asymptomatic infections in communities,” wrote Min Liu and colleagues at Peking University in China. Officials should screen for asymptomatic infections, and those who are identified “should be under management similar to that for confirmed infections, including isolating and contact tracing.”