Art Of Teaching

The World Health Organization, last week has voted B.1.1.529 – named after the Greek letter “Omicron” – as a COVID-19 variant of apprehension.

The variant has worried public health specialists due to its “very uncommon groups of mutations”. The new incarnation of SARS-CoV-2 has so many novel changes leading to worries about augmented transmissibility, vulnerable immune system, and probable resistance against vaccines.

Omicron was first spotted in Botswana in the beginning of November. Thereafter it has also been informed in the neighbouring South Africa, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.

The WHO’s declaration yesterday led to the annoyance of travel restrictions by many countries again.

Concerns of the New Covid Omicron Variant-

The Omicron variant is significant because it is the first variant which has developed from high populace resistance, which is acquired through previous infections or vaccinations.

People are fundamentally mobile breeding places of virus. The antibodies and our resistant systems are the “natural selection filters”. Suppose we toss a load of Covid into all these mobile breeding place i.e., the immune system of the people, and let them mutate as per their wish, given the “natural selection filters”, in time some of them will develop with the essential alterations to sidestep the immunity.

Fundamentally, all the people who endured Delta variant, are as good as new to Omicron. People who have been double vaccinated also. So, we are viewing a global alarm to close down the country borders.

The ones at the greatest risk are those who barely survived the Delta variant because there is no 6-month grace period after an infection anymore.

This has given everybody the realisation that Coronavirus can mature into a good immune escape within a very short time period. A year? A year and a half? Therefore arises the necessity of a yearly vaccination like the Flu.

Symptoms are mild-

Hospitals all over Southern Africa are increasingly broadcasting that the symptoms of the hostile new Covid strain Omicron are “uncommon but very minor,”.

 90 per cent of all new contaminations in the Johannesburg area are now triggered by the Omicron strain but, so far, the Covid death rate and even hospital entries are not growing significantly.

Experts are therefore thoughtfully hopeful of the view that if Omicron shows to be less deadly but more transmissible and dominant than the Delta variant, the new Omicron strain mutation may truly be a blessing in disguise.

Hundreds of people who are infected in Southern Africa reportedly complained of symptoms of nausea, headaches, exhaustion and a high pulse rate, but nobody suffered from a loss of taste or smell, which was seen in  most other Covid transmutations.

Blessing in disguise?

Analysing the recent data coming from Southern Africa, virologist Marc van Ranst is of the view that “if the omicron variant is less pathogenic but having greater infection, it would be totally positive to allow Omicron to replace Delta.”

The WHO however gave the warning that initial indications advocates that the variant has an augmented danger of reinfection and may spread more speedily than other strains, including the Delta variant.

This omicron variant has more than 30 mutations – around twice as many as the Delta variant – which make it more communicable and dodge the defence given by prior infections or vaccinations.

We need to therefore keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.