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“Previous infection used to protect against Delta, and now with Omicron it doesn’t seem to be the case,” Professor Anne Von Gottberg from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg said Thursday.

The country, which has the largest known Omicron outbreak, reported 11,535 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, up from 8,561 a day earlier, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said. Last Thursday—also the day South Africa announced the discovery of the new variant—2,465 Covid-19 cases were identified.
The institute didn’t say what variant caused the new infections but scientists say that Omicron is now the dominant variant in the country of 60 million people. In an indication that large numbers of infections aren’t being detected, the proportion of tests coming back positive increased to 22.4% from 16.5% on Wednesday.

Also, the infection count from the company holiday party in Norway is now up from 30-40 to 50 out of 120 attendees. Some might not have been vaccinated but all were tested before attending. They are still sequencing the virus samples but at least some are Omicron and some employees had recently returned from South Africa.
 
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Reactions: madodel
Info / link from (sailorrooscout) a "Senior Scientist / Vaccine Research & Development" that is fairly popular.

Note: "Prev Infections, not vaccine induced immunity"

URL from below: Increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection associated with emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa

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Article
Severe COVID tied to high risk of death, mostly by other causes, within year

on this study
COVID-19 Post-acute Sequelae Among Adults: 12 Month Mortality Risk

"Survivors of severe COVID-19—especially those younger than 65 years—may be at more than twice the risk of dying within the next year than those who had mild or moderate illness or were never infected, finds a study today in Frontiers in Medicine.

Another finding of the analysis of electronic health records of 13,638 patients who tested positive or negative for COVID-19 is that only 20% of those who had severe COVID-19 (requiring hospitalization) and died did so because of complications of their infection, such as abnormal blood clotting, respiratory failure, or cardiovascular problems.

Rather, 80% were due to different reasons typically considered unrelated to COVID-19.

"Since these deaths were not for a direct COVID-19 cause of death among these patients who have recovered from the initial episode of COVID-19, this data suggests that the biological insult from COVID-19 and physiological stress from COVID-19 is significant,"
 
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Reactions: JRP3
Info / link from (sailorrooscout) a "Senior Scientist / Vaccine Research & Development" that is fairly popular.

Note: "Prev Infections, not vaccine induced immunity"
I follow Chise on Twitter and they are a good source of Covid information.

To be clear, the cited study does not reach much of a conclusion about the risk of reinfection for vaccinated people. It’s about the greatly increased risk of reinfection (versus Alpha or Beta) on people whose vaccination status was unknown to the researchers (although vaccination rates in South Africa are relatively low at ~20%).
 
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We have an outbreak of omicron Covid-19 mutant, in Norway now. 120 employees went to a company event (Scatec, listed on OBX) in the capital city's most crowded area. All employees were vaccinated, they even got tested before entry. The dinner was held in a separate room. One employee came from a business trip to South Africa some days ago, and tested negative as well. This event happened Friday. They went to the nightclub after the dinner. Saturday the omicron positive person went to another nightclub, not knowing hen was positive. Yesterday cpr test and analysis, of the one who came from South Africa, was positive with omicron. Yesterday half (about 60) of the participants tested positive, and the health authorities in Norway are pretty sure that they all have omicron. I expect analysis to be finished by tomorrow. All guests from the nightclubs are asked to test themselves. Some outside the company have already tested positive. The omicron seems to be very transferable, even when you are vaccinated. Because of this, the government in Norway decided to apply several restrictions.
 
We have an outbreak of omicron Covid-19 mutant, in Norway now. 120 employees went to a company event (Scatec, listed on OBX) in the capital city's most crowded area. All employees were vaccinated, they even got tested before entry. The dinner was held in a separate room. One employee came from a business trip to South Africa some days ago, and tested negative as well. This event happened Friday. They went to the nightclub after the dinner. Saturday the omicron positive person went to another nightclub, not knowing hen was positive. Yesterday cpr test and analysis, of the one who came from South Africa, was positive with omicron. Yesterday half (about 60) of the participants tested positive, and the health authorities in Norway are pretty sure that they all have omicron. I expect analysis to be finished by tomorrow. All guests from the nightclubs are asked to test themselves. Some outside the company have already tested positive. The omicron seems to be very transferable, even when you are vaccinated. Because of this, the government in Norway decided to apply several restrictions.
Thanks for the company name that helped make the search quick:
 
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Also remember that the original South African strain, which was outcompeted by delta, could evade AstraZeneca and Sinovac. This strain has some of the same mutations and more.

Imo it seems that the likelihood that most of the world will go through serious pain with omicron is pretty high. Many countries that have not given pfizer/moderna to >90% of their population could be in some serious pain in the next few months with overburdened hospitals and increased mortality rates.
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: Double-O
Informative data-based summary. I still think the sample is potentially too small to draw firm conclusions, but I have to say it doesn’t look great for the growth rates so far. It seems like the evidence would point to being of similar transmissibility (this was the remaining sliver of hope to avoid significant surges elsewhere) to Delta, with significant immune escape (already assumed, not surprising). Get boosted if you have not already been.

And hope that the FDA and vaccine manufacturers pull out the stops to get a booster (and the Paxlovid!) approved ASAP.


Worth noting this article does skip over an important question - does prior infection provide any protection against a severe second infection by Omicron? Clearly there will be cases of severe reinfection and death. But will the rate be any lower? Similar questions apply to vaccination. It seems reasonable that if vaccine-acquired natural immunity provides robust protection against severe disease, infection-acquired natural immunity alone might provide SOME (probably less though) protection. We need a win.

 
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  • Informative
Reactions: jerry33 and Jeff N
On another chat board someone posted that while it is more infectious, Omicron seems to produce milder illness in people without pre-existing health issues, compared to earlier variants. The poster apparently gets his information from the This Week In Virology podcast. I pass this on as second-hand information. I do not follow the covid news much since I am vaccinated and boosted and I follow all the recommended precautions. Beyond that, I don't see how obsessing over the latest speculations would do me any good.
 
Worth noting this article does skip over an important question - does prior infection provide any protection against a severe second infection by Omicron?
The consensus seems to be that killer T-cells trained by previous infection or vaccination will usually prevent severe illness and death. T-cells have their own unique antigen recognition mechanism that is less fragile to viral mutations than the antibodies made by B-cells.

However, it seems that the evidence for the importance of antibodies vs T-cells in the role of protecting against severe disease and death is limited and uncertain. Experts disagree, as the saying goes, and testing for T-cell response to an antigen is much more complex. We may soon find out.
 
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On another chat board someone posted that while it is more infectious, Omicron seems to produce milder illness in people without pre-existing health issues, compared to earlier variants. The poster apparently gets his information from the This Week In Virology podcast. I pass this on as second-hand information. I do not follow the covid news much since I am vaccinated and boosted and I follow all the recommended precautions. Beyond that, I don't see how obsessing over the latest speculations would do me any good.
I listen to that podcast. Basically, nobody knows. It’s too early to tell. The average age in South Africa trends much younger than in Europe or the US and the risk of death from Covid is exponential as age increases.
 
At least some scientists think omicron evolved in animal rather than human hosts. COVID-19 has spread among many types of animals, but the original didn't spread readily among rodents. But omicron has some mutations that seem to help the virus infect rodents.