Omicron variant comes to Switzerland. Can we save christmas
Christmas is just around the corner, but what Christmas will it be? Many of us were already planning a family vacation or a much-needed winter trip to an exotic destination. And then came it, Omicron, another “worrying” variant of the coronavirus.
This content was published on December 3, 2021 – 9:00 am
The variant has so far been identified in more than 20 countries, including Switzerland, where three people have been isolated. But how concerned should we be? Despite the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies this variant as ‘worrying’ external linkThere are still many uncertainties due to certain features that could make it more transferable and risky. The WHO expects to receive more information on portabilityexternal link ‘within a few days’.
Epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft from the Bern Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine said on British television that the Omicron mutation may not be recognized by the immune system.
“What sets the Omicron variant apart from the others is that it has many mutations, especially at the spike protein level. The spike protein is the part of the virus that allows it to enter cells (…) and it’s also the part that the body learns to recognize if you’ve been infected or vaccinated before, but the body uses it whole certain parts of the spike protein that are easiest to see (…), so if this protein is mutated, the immune system cannot recognize the virus, ”says Hodcroft.
However, it indicates that the body is likely to learn to recognize different parts of the virus and recognize small changes, so the effects of this mutation are still uncertain.
In an interview with SWI swissinfo.ch some time ago, Hodcroft said that the longer the virus reproduces, the greater the risk of mutation. “The longer we play this game, the higher the chances the next mutation is one we don’t want to see,” she said. It is therefore important to keep infections low and to contain the spread of variants as much as possible.
In Switzerland, health authorities have stated that the Omicron variant poses a new health risk and could influence the further course of the pandemic, which could worsen the prospects for the coming weeks and months.
The advice remains, therefore, to get vaccinated or to receive a booster dose.
What do you think of the current situation? Are you scared of the Omicron variant? Are you changing your plans for the winter vacation? Let me know your opinionexternal link!
Escape from vaccines and lockdown
“I don’t understand why there are so many cases, even though so many people are vaccinated,” asked Lydia *, an Austrian girl I met on a yoga retreat in Fuerteventura last week. Neither Lydia nor her sister Sylvia * are vaccinated. You live in a small village near Salzburg, in one of the federal states most severely affected by the coronavirus, where the proportion of people vaccinated with two vaccinations is 59.5%, below the European average (66.2%).
After a worrying increase in the number of cases, Austria recently reintroduced a temporary lockdown and is the only European country to introduce mandatory vaccination from 2022.
“We came here to escape the madness in our country,” say the two sisters.
But Austria’s new Federal Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg, who was born in Bern and took over the post after the resignation of the previous Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz, believes that Austria must do more to convince the population of a vaccination and spoke of an “attack on the health system”external link by some political forces, vaccination skeptics and disinformation.
The Viennese authorities fear that the current rate of people vaccinated with two doses of vaccine (66.9%) will not be enough to cope with the winter and the new variant, although the hospitals, above all, are not under the same pressure as at the beginning of the pandemic stand thanks to the vaccines.
the Diagram of the European Center for Disease Preventionexternal link and Control shows that in Europe, the countries with the highest rates of fully vaccinated people are those with the fewest deaths from coronavirus.
Only on Wednesday also EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen open to the idea of mandatory vaccinationexternal link in the EU and call on the member states to initiate a discussion in this direction. “The EU is a unique epidemiological region,” said Von der Leyen. “We agree that we have a person-to-person approach, and not boundaries that the virus does not respect. For that we need tests, tracking, social distancing and masks that we have seen work, ”she added, speaking about measures to counteract the new variant.
Germany immediately accepted the invitation and responded to the fall explosion of impose a nationwide lockdown on the unvaccinatedexternal link. Like neighboring Austria, Germany could also make vaccination compulsory from February 2022.
What do you think of compulsory vaccination? Could it help us contain the pandemic or is it inappropriate? Send me your comments and opinions.external link
Why do some people end up in intensive care and others just develop a mild cold?
Omicron is bad news, but good news comes from science. Two studies with Swiss scientists have shown that genes and blood sugar levels play a decisive role in the course of coronavirus disease. These results, along with other known risk factors, help explain why some people are more affected by Covid-19 than others.
This could pave the way for machine learning methods to be used to identify people most at risk of contracting the virus, predict severe cases, and understand who needs priority treatment.
“It is very difficult for us doctors to work during a pandemic. Sometimes so many patients come that it is difficult to understand who is at risk of developing a severe form of Covid-19 and who is not, a great help, especially under time pressure, to have more evaluation elements, “says Dimitri Patriki, doctor at the Kantonsspital Baden. During the first wave of Covid-19, Patriki sometimes saw whole families with no previous illness falling seriously ill with Covid-19, so he thought that genes could have something to do with it.
A full picture of the risk factors could help healthcare professionals predict the behavior of patients with Covid-19. “I hope we get to the point where we can test genetic markers to tell a person whether they are at a very high risk of developing Covid-19 or seriously ill,” the doctor hopes.
Since we will have to live with this pandemic for a long time, we’d better have a few extra tricks up our sleeves.
Do you have any comments, remarks, or questions about the latest science news? let us talk about itexternal link with (virtual) coffee.
* The real names of the two girls have been replaced with fictional names.