Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

Covid news: Omicron detected in US; UK reports 48,374 new cases and 171 deaths – as it happened

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Case identified in California; UK infections on rise amid fears over Omicron variant; non-EU travellers to France must have negative Covid test regardless of vaccination status

Three people who escaped an Australian Covid quarantine facility have been arrested.

Our reporter Cait Kelly from Melbourne, Australia, has the story.

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When did Omicron Covid variant arrive in UK and is it spreading?

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Analysis: scientists are working full tilt to answer these vital questions that may give clues as to what is to come

As new cases of Omicron continue to emerge in the UK, scientists are working full tilt to answer two vital questions: when did the variant arrive and is it spreading?

While at first glance those queries may seem less important than those around vaccine effectiveness or disease severity, the answers may give important clues as to what is to come.

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Omicron Covid variant ‘present in Europe at least 10 days ago’

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Two cases of new Covid variant found in Netherlands predate last week’s alert from South Africa

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 was present in Europe at least 10 days ago and already appears to be spreading in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

“We have found the Omicron coronavirus variant in two test samples that were taken on November 19 and 23,” the Dutch health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. “It is not yet clear whether these people had also visited southern Africa,” the ministry added.

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How dangerous is the Omicron variant?

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The Omicron variant of Covid has prompted governments around the world to reintroduce border restrictions, with Australia shutting the border to southern Africa and delaying the reopening date for international students and visa holders. The federal government has called for calm, describing the variant as ‘manageable’, but what do we actually know about it?


Laura Murphy-Oates speaks to medical editor Melissa Davey about what scientists have discovered so far about Omicron and our evolving approach to combating Covid variants

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Testing, vaccines, sequencing: experts call for multi-pronged approach to Omicron

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‘Best hope’ for containing the new variant is worldwide vaccine campaign where rates are low, public health experts say

As new cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant are uncovered across the globe and threaten to spread in America, US officials are reacting by urging vaccinations and boosters instead of imposing restrictions which have increasingly provoked political fights.

But the US should quickly invest in other tools as well, experts said, including testing, genomic sequencing and surveillance, better communication, and a strong focus on global vaccine equity to prevent the emergence of new variants.

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Despite reports of milder symptoms Omicron should not be understimated

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While anecdotal accounts suggest the variant may cause less severe illness and it will take weeks for definitive data

As the world scrambles to contain the new variant, some are hopefully seizing on anecdotal reports from South Africa that it may cause only mild illness. But although previous variants of the coronavirus have been associated with different symptoms and severity, it would be dangerous to assume that Omicron is a viral pussy cat, experts say.

At a briefing convened by South Africa’s Department of Health on Monday, Unben Pillay, a GP from practising in Midrand on the outskirts of Johannesburg, said that while “it is still early days” the cases he was seeing were typically mild: “We are seeing patients present with dry cough, fever, night sweats and a lot of body pains. Vaccinated people tend to do much better.”

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Covid: UK aims for 500,000 jabs a day in bid to outpace Omicron variant

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Ministers to ramp up vaccinations to 3.5m a week as minimum gap for boosters is halved to three months

Ministers are targeting a return to half a million UK Covid jabs a day as the waiting time for boosters was cut to three months in a bid to outpace the Omicron variant that scientists believe is already spreading in the community.

Confirmed Omicron cases rose to 11 in England and Scotland on Monday, with scientific advisers braced for hundreds more to be detected in the next week or so.

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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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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
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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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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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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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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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Covid live: WHO calls Omicron variant of concern; New York declares ‘disaster emergency’

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ECDC follows WHO in threat assessment of new variant; countries bar foreign nationals from several southern African nations; UK sees most new infections for a month

Hungary needs to increase the number of people taking booster shots against COVID-19 to curb infections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told state radio this morning.

Reuters report that Orbán said the government would extend a special campaign making vaccinations available without any prior registration to next week following a surge in Covid-19 cases.

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