Just a few weeks ago, the world was blissfully ignorant of the latest variant of the coronavirus rapidly mutating its way into our lives and the headlines.The warnings from health officials that the virus and the transmission of Covid-19 are always a step or two ahead of the population and government responses now seem conservative in the extreme. The Omicron variant is more like a whole playing field ahead of us.
The concatenation of bad news on the Covid front is enough to grind many down. The whole ugly saga has nightmarish tinges, in that as soon as some light seems to appear at the end of the tunnel, those lights get quickly switched off.
Progress towards beating the virus seems stymied at every turn. It’s like climbing towards what you think is the top of the mountain, only to find when you get there it is yet another false summit. And while Omicron explodes uncontrollably around the world, and appears well on the way to becoming the dominant strain of the virus, we still have to deal with Delta, which is not going away any time soon.
The speed with which Omicron is spreading is breathtaking, particularly in parts of Europe. In Britain, there were 88,376 new cases of Covid-19 reported on Thursday, 31.4% higher than Thursday the week before, and confirmed Omicron cases increased to 11,708, which was 1691 more than on Wednesday.
The UK Health Security Agency has calculated Omicron cases are doubling about every two days in most parts of the country. However, in London, they are doubling every 36 hours and it is likely about three-quarters of all cases there will be of the Omicron strain.
One brighter note, amid grim messages from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that the country faces a tidal wave of Omicron and from Labour Party leader Keir Starmer that Mr Johnson is too weak to lead the current crisis, comes from England’s chief medical officer.
Prof Chris Whitty believes the whole coronavirus situation may be slowly improving and that each six months will be better than the previous six. He says in about 18 months’ time there could be a range of vaccines to cover all coronavirus variants.
To put that in quasi-Churchillian terms which Mr Johnson would probably approve of, Prof Whitty sees it as perhaps the beginning of the end rather than the end of the beginning.
Meanwhile, buffoon Boris and his bumbling colleagues have been busy trying to wheedle their way out of a controversy surrounding Christmas parties last year at Downing St and at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.
It is clear Boris’ cronies were having a whizzbanger of a good time together, when millions of British people were facing a miserable and parsimonious Christmas alone and separated from family due to Covid-19 restrictions.
While Omicron may have overdone its mutations and weakened itself enough to cause milder symptoms than Delta, that is not yet known for sure. Most worrying is its infectiousness, and the fact such acceleration through a population is going to put incredible pressure on the health services.
It was never going to take long before Omicron broke through our barriers into a managed isolation and quarantine facility, this time in Christchurch. However, director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and University of Otago epidemiologist Prof Michael Baker are both sanguine that it doesn’t necessarily mean it will escape into the community.
Health advice is that a third shot, or booster, of the vaccine will help protect against Omicron and that the gap between the second dose and having that might need to be brought forward by a couple of months. But there is still a lot to learn.
University of Otago evolutionary biologist Dr Jemma Geoghegan warns the Government had to be flexible and ‘‘change tack’’ with the arrival of Delta and might need to do so again. Dr Bloomfield has also not ruled out the possibility of using lockdowns to contain Omicron.
It seems rather unfortunate timing that a new strain could be poised ready to spread across New Zealand when the worst of Delta beyond the now-dismantled Auckland border is probably yet to come.
However, our isolation should, once again, work in our favour, as we watch closely how the rest of the world copes with Omicron over the next month or so.
