Category Archives: Coronavirus

What does appearance of Omicron variant mean for the double-vaccinated?

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We find out how much protection Covid vaccines may offer amid speculation new variant could be more resistant

The emergence of Omicron has prompted widespread speculation that it may be more resistant to Covid-19 vaccines than existing variants, including Delta. But what does that mean for the average double-vaccinated person?

All the vaccines currently available in the UK work by training the immune system against the coronavirus spike protein – the key it uses to infect cells by binding to the ACE2 receptor. Omicron possesses more than 30 mutations in this protein, including 10 in the so-called “receptor-binding domain” (RBD) – the specific part that latches on to this receptor. Delta has two RBD mutations.

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Israel seals borders and Morocco bans flights as Omicron Covid fears rise

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Red-listing of 50 African countries and use of phone monitoring technology among measures approved by Israel

Israel is barring entry to all foreign nationals and Morocco is suspending all incoming flights for two weeks, in the two most drastic of travel restrictions imposed by countries around the world in an attempt to slow the spread of the new Omicron variant of coronavirus.

Israel’s coronavirus cabinet has authorised a series of measures including banning entry by foreigners, red-listing travel to 50 African countries, and making quarantine mandatory for all Israelis arriving from abroad. The entry ban is expected to come into effect at midnight local time (10pm GMT) on Sunday.

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Fauci: US could face ‘fifth wave’ of Covid as Omicron variant nears

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  • Collins and Fauci emphasise need for vaccines and boosters
  • Warning that variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility
  • Coronavirus: live coverage

Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday the US has “the potential to go into a fifth wave” of coronavirus infections amid rising cases and stagnating vaccination rates. He also warned that the newly discovered Omicron variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility.

As Fauci toured the US political talkshows, countries around the world including the US scrambled to guard against Omicron, which has stoked fears of vaccine resistance.

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How bad will the Omicron Covid variant be in Britain? Three things will tell us | Devi Sridhar

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A new variant identified in southern Africa is causing global panic – but its real impact will be shown by the data scientists are racing to establish

Omicron, the name of the new Covid-19 variant that is sending worrying signals from southern Africa, sounds like something from Transformers. It has caused panic across the world, among governments, the public and the stock markets. After adding a number of southern African countries to the red list, the UK government has reimposed mandatory masks in England from Tuesday, and will require anyone travelling to the country from abroad to take a PCR test. Omicron is probably the first variant to have scientists worried since Delta became the predominant strain in every country last summer. But how bad it is? What does it mean for future lockdowns – and future deaths?

Scientists are waiting on three pieces of data before they will be able to tell what effect this new variant will have over the next six to 12 months. The first is how infectious Omicron is. Can it outcompete Delta? Earlier this year we saw another worrying variant, Beta, that luckily faded away as a result of a selective advantage in Delta that allowed it to transmit faster between people. Limited data from South Africa shows that Omicron is very infectious, but whether it will become the predominant strain remains to be seen.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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Travel firms scramble to rearrange holidays amid new Covid measures

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Swiss skiing holidays in doubt as country joins Spain in tightening travel rules to contain Omicron variant

Tour operators are scrambling to rearrange Swiss skiing holidays after the country joined Spain in tightening travel restrictions amid rising concerns about the spread of the new Omicron Covid variant.

From Saturday night, Switzerland mandated 10 days of quarantine for all new arrivals, in effect wrecking skiing holidays in the Swiss Alps until further notice. Travel firms are also wrestling with Spain’s ban on non-vaccinated arrivals that will affect British holidaymakers from Wednesday 1 December.

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Swiss voters back law behind Covid vaccine certificate

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After tense campaign, early results show about two-thirds in favour of law giving legal basis for Covid pass

Swiss voters have firmly backed the law behind the country’s Covid pass in a referendum, following a tense campaign that saw unprecedented levels of hostility.

Early results on Sunday showed about two-thirds of voters supported the law, with market researchers GFS Bern projecting 63% backing.

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Covid live news: WHO Africa head urges world to keep borders open; third Omicron case found in UK

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UN agency’s comments follow South Africa’s call to reverse flight bans; G7 health ministers to hold urgent meeting on Omicron variant; large contact tracing operation in Westminster

China could face more than 630,000 Covid-19 infections a day if it dropped its zero-tolerance policies by lifting travel curbs, according to a study by Peking University mathematicians, Reuters reports.

In the report by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the mathematicians said China could not afford to lift travel restrictions without more efficient vaccinations or specific treatments.

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Scientists sharing Omicron data were heroic. Let’s ensure they don’t regret it | Jeffrey Barrett

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The teams in Africa who detected the new Covid genome moved quickly. Their actions should not result in economic loss
• Coronavirus – latest updates
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One of the positive experiences during two years of pandemic gloom has been the speed of scientific progress in understanding and treating Covid. Many effective vaccines were launched in less than a year and rapid large-scale trials found a cheap and effective drug, dexamethasone, that saved thousands of lives.

The global scientific community has also carried out “genomic surveillance” – sequencing the genome of the virus to track how it evolves and spreads at an unprecedented level: the public genome database has more than 5.5m genomes. The great value of that genomic surveillance, underpinned by a commitment to rapid and open sharing of the data by all countries in near-real time, has been seen in the last few days as we’ve learned of the Covid variant called Omicron.

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Biden and Harris briefed as US braces for arrival of Omicron Covid variant

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US imposes travel restrictions from southern Africa as Anthony Fauci says he would not be surprised if variant were already in US

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been briefed on the latest situation regarding the new Omicron coronavirus variant, the White House said on Saturday, as Britain, Germany and Italy reported detecting cases.

Biden, who was spending Thanksgiving with family in Nantucket, Massachusetts, told reporters on Friday: “We don’t know a lot about the variant except that it is of great concern [and] seems to spread rapidly.”

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Early action against Omicron is imperative to avoid devastating consequences | Ewan Birney

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Scientists have sprung into action to identify the new Covid variant. We don’t yet know if it is a major threat - but we should not take any chances

It was only a matter of time before a new Sars-CoV-2 variant of concern emerged, requiring an urgent global response. It would seem that the Omicron variant, identified by scientists across Africa, including the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), poses the next major threat in the course of the pandemic. Early evidence from their genomic surveillance suggests that this new variant is a serious cause for concern and it is imperative that we act fast in response to this new information.

The variant has also been detected in Botswana and Hong Kong, and will undoubtedly continue to arise in other territories in the coming days; travel-related cases have appeared in Belgium and Israel. Two cases of the new variant have been detected in the UK at the time of writing.

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Covid live: PM announces new measures after two cases of Omicron variant detected in UK

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Masks mandatory in shops and on public transport; PCR tests reintroduced for travellers to UK

The UK should cut the gap between the second dose of a Covid-19 vaccination and the booster jab from six to five months, the Labour party said on Saturday, Reuters reports.

As the new Omicron variant sparked concern around the world, Alex Norris, Labour’s junior health spokesperson, said:

This new variant is a wake-up call.

The pandemic is not over. We need to urgently bolster our defences to keep the virus at bay.

If you look at where most of the mutations are, they are similar to regions of the spike protein that have been seen with other variants so far and that tells you that despite mutations existing in other variants, the vaccines have continued to prevent very severe disease as we’ve moved through Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.

At least from a speculative point of view we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against this variant for severe disease but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed.

The processes of how one goes about developing a new vaccine are increasingly well oiled.

So if it’s needed that is something that could be moved very rapidly.

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Boris Johnson tightens rules on travel and mask-wearing over Omicron concerns

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Travellers to UK must take PCR tests and masks to be made mandatory in shops and on public transport

Boris Johnson has announced fresh measures to curb the spread of coronavirus including mandatory masks in shops and PCR tests for travellers entering England after two cases of the Omicron variant were detected in the country.

Amid mounting global concern over Omicron, named a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization on Friday, the prime minister set out a series of steps the UK is taking to maximise its defence against Covid-19.

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Omicron’s full impact will be felt in countries where fewer are vaccinated

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Analysis: the new coronavirus variant seems highly transmissible, but the big question is whether it causes severe disease. Either way, poorer nations will be hit hardest

In early August Gideon Schreiber and a team of virologists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel began playing around with the spike protein of the Sars-CoV-2 virus – the protein that allows the virus to enter our cells – to see if they could predict future mutations that could yield dangerous new variants of Covid-19.

At the time, Schreiber noted with concern that there were a variety of ways in which the spike protein could evolve. If all of these mutations occurred at once, it could yield a variant that was both extremely transmissible and potentially capable of evading some of the body’s immune defences, blunting the efficacy of the vaccines.

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The Sicilian town where the Covid vaccination rate hit 104%

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An ‘extraordinary’ campaign is credited for Palazzo Adriano’s stellar uptake – even if topping 100% is a statistical quirk

While European governments weigh up new mandates and measures to boost the uptake of Covid jabs there is on the slopes of Sicily’s Monte delle Rose a village with a vaccination rate that defies mathematics: 104%.

The figure is in part a statistical quirk – vaccine rates are calculated by Italian health authorities on a town or village’s official population and can in theory rise above 100% if enough non-residents are jabbed there – but Palazzo Adriano, where the Oscar-winning movie Cinema Paradiso was filmed, is by any standards a well-vaccinated community. A good portion of the population has already taken or booked a third dose and since vaccines were first available it utilised its close-knit relations to protect its people.

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Australia live news updates: Greg Hunt closes border to southern Africa in response to Omicron Covid variant; five deaths and new protests in Victoria

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Australians attempting to return from nine African nations to be subject to hotel quarantine

New South Wales double-dose vaccination rates have hit 94.5% for people over 16.

For those 12-15, the rates are also increasing rapidly. 81.2% have had a single dose; 76.2% are fully vaccinated.

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US to restrict travel from southern Africa over Omicron Covid variant fears

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Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said on Friday there was “no indication” the new “Omicron” coronavirus variant discovered in southern Africa had reached the US.

Nonetheless, the the Biden administration said it would restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries in southern Africa, starting on Monday.

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Omicron variant spreads to Europe as UK announces countermeasures

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Experts stress importance of delaying import of new Covid variant to UK to avoid Christmas mixing

As an alarming new Covid variant spread to Europe on Friday, scientists warned that it would inevitably reach Britain, while ministers faced calls to urgently speed up the vaccination programme.

Thousands of travellers were left stranded or with their plans in disarray after flight bans were introduced targeting countries across southern Africa, where the variant was discovered. Hotel quarantine and enhanced testing would be brought in across the UK, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said.

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Omicron: everything you need to know about new Covid variant

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Key questions answered about coronavirus variant first detected in southern Africa

The variant was initially referred to as B.1.1.529, but on Friday was designated as a variant of concern (VOC) by the World Health Organization because of its “concerning” mutations and because “preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant”. The WHO system assigns such variants a Greek letter, to provide a non-stigmatising label that does not associate new variants with the location where they were first detected. The new variant has been called Omicron.

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