![]() Last week, a national exercise code-named Omega was held, to examine how to cope with a fifth wave that would be caused, hypothetically, by the arrival of a new variant that was immune to vaccination. Israel was among the earliest vaccinators in the world and among the first to introduce booster shots-although vaccine coverage is still a little lower than many comparable countries (due to hesitancy, not capacity).īut why raise all of this at PAXsims? Because Israel recently conducted an exercise to examine the challenges that would be posed by a “doomsday” variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, one that is more lethal to children yet not affected by current vaccines. This is around the mid-point of those countries in the Middle East and North Africa for which reliable data exists. Cumulative mortality is well below that of most OECD or G20 countries. 3.In confronting the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Israel has been moderately successful. However, it is important to remember that all variants of concern so far have had the ability to cause severe disease or death in some instances, and it is still being investigated. We have been able to treat these patients conservatively at home.” She added that no loss of smell or taste had been observed and oxygen levels remained normal. “Most of them are seeing very, very mild symptoms, and none of them, so far, have admitted patients to surgeries. And this doesn’t fit in the clinical picture,” she said. ![]() “We have seen a lot of Delta patients during the third wave. Angelique Coetzee told Reuters that the symptoms were mild and mostly consisted of fatigue, body aches and headaches. While it will take several more weeks to be sure, the chair of the South African Medical Association, Dr. WHO however, says that there is “no information to suggest that symptoms associated with Omicron are different from those from other variants.” National Geographic reports that of the positive Covid tests in the Tshwane region of Gauteng Province, where it is supposed the variant began, 30% are now Omicron positive. While WHO says that it is not clear yet whether Omicron is more transmissible, the number of people testing positive to the variant could suggest it is. It may be more transmissible, but so far the symptoms seem mild This international collaboration at scale is what is keeping us ahead of this virus, and it’s pretty damn impressive. The same day, seven more of the sequence now known as Omicron were added and due to the high number of mutations and similarities to other variants of concern, they kept an eye on it.īy sharing the sequences before they even knew what was happening, scientists around the world could also simultaneously study them, and bodies such as WHO could swiftly take action and declare a ‘variant of concern’. The Guardian reports that on 23rd November scientists in southern Africa uploaded 99 Covid sequences with the majority being Delta, but three came back differently. This is because scientists have been routinely carrying out genomic surveillance to check for mutations. The New York Times reports that scientists have been quicker to assess this variant than any other, and that within just 36 hours researchers had samples from 100 positive patients to analyse and alerted the world. They've been running genomic sequencing for ages.
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