Everything seemed to have entered an expectant calm until Omicron it was described on November 10 by South African researchers. Week after week cases of Covid-19 originated by this variant increased steadily and just 45 days later it changed to part of the world. So much so that beyond the occasional closed border, at least 8,300 international and domestic air connections were left to nothing throughout the Christmas weekend.
Cancellations and delays did not have to do with the closing of borders but with how Covid-19 caused illness and isolation of close contacts between aeronautical personnel. If even health personnel and public administration employees are becoming scarce in some countries for the same reason: illness, isolation, waiting for testing.
On December 26 alone, 472,915 new cases were registered worldwide. In the U.S the cases caused by Ómicron already surpass those caused by the variant Delta and they exceeded 180,000 in a single day. France rreported no less than 104,611 new infections at Christmas, surpassing the record of 100,000 since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, the Argentina it is not out of the picture. In just three weeks, the percentage of reported cases of Covid-19 increased nationally by 158%, especially dragged down by the outbreak of cases in the province of Cordova, the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA) and, later, the Buenos Aires province.
Cases and hospitalizations
Some of the few studies carried out so far (especially a couple carried out in South Africa, the first country where the massive contagions derived from the Omicron variant struck first) feed the hypothesis that the new variant is less lethal, given that despite the increase in cases are not increasing with the same intensity the rates of hospitalizations and deaths.
However, among unvaccinated people or with incomplete schedules this does not apply and that is why in United States and EuropeWhere the anti-vaccine movement is strong, this pandemic is referred to as “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”. The number of patients in England admitted to hospital with Covid-19 has reached its highest level since mid-February after increasing by 74% in just one week.
But there are also trials carried out in the United Kingdom and in Denmark that show that there is no such decrease in the hospitalization of people with Covid, although they are very preliminary and were carried out on few cases and hospitalized patients. There is still uncertainty and many questions to answer.
According to the statistics and analysis of the evolution of the pandemic carried out by the doctor in Physical Sciences and researcher of the CONICET Jorge Aliaga, between December 7 and 13 of the year that has just ended, there was a weekly average of 2,688 confirmed cases. But between 14 and 20 of the same month they became 4,725 and, from 21 to 27, no less than 12,180. “This represented increases of 76% first and then 158% at the country level,” he explains. In the cases of Córdoba and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the situation is much worse, if we compare with the lows recorded: the first one has already risen ten times since then ”. In CABA, the increase has been greater than 20 times. And what is most worrying is that the rise has been taking place in a very short time.
This number of people with positive Covid-19 tests, however, is not reflected in the number of hospitalized patients or deaths. Although it is always necessary to remember that the cases detected today will impact the occupation of beds in the health system approximately two weeks later.
Undoubtedly, vaccination is fulfilling its protective function in terms of reducing the severity of the disease and deaths. If one were to compare in a simple and direct way what happened during the worst wave in Argentina, which lasted approximately from April to mid-July 2021, the difference is noticeable.
“We could place the start of the second wave towards the end of March 2021, when the moving average of cases reported in CABA once again exceeded a thousand cases per day. In 20 days, this value rose to almost 2,800, which implied an increase of 172%. Five days after the increase in cases, the number of patients admitted to intensive care in the public subsystem began to increase. They went from 130 to 300 in the same number of days. The highest value recorded was 446 patients at the worst moment of that wave ”, explains the biochemist and data analyst, Santiago Olszevicki.
“Similarly, so far in December the cases reported in the CABA have gone from being 250 to much more than a thousand in the weekly weighting of the daily value. However, the increase in intensive therapies, in this wave, is much more moderate. At the beginning of the month it oscillated around 20. Now, it has been practically unchanged for a week, varying between 29 and 33 hospitalized patients ”.
This is a direct numerical example. But the problem itself is much more complex. And it is that when one tries to delve into the differences between what happened during the wave that was from April to June of this year, it would be necessary to take into account various variables: the number of people who already had Covid-19 and therefore antibodies , the percentages of vaccinated with first, second and even third doses, the ages of the people who today make up the bulk of the new confirmed cases (mostly, those between 19 and 29 years old). The outlook for May 2021 is very different from that of December of the same year, although the anguish and fatigue have only deepened.
“It seems to me that it is too early to analyze the true impact of Ómicron, beyond the statistics on cases. It is complicated, because we are going to have two variants co-circulating surely at least for a while, Delta and Ómicron. So the analyzes are going to get complicated for a while, and especially as long as we don’t have more or less reliable data about which cases are by Ómicron and which are not ”, says the doctor in Chemical Sciences and a specialist in bioinformatics Rodrigo Quiroga.
“And if we take into account that the age range where the cases are occurring is mainly the one that goes from 15 to 30 years, it is also expected that there will be fewer internees and deaths. I insist, in order to know a little more we have to wait to make the most in-depth analyzes ”, sums up the CONICET researcher.
“In Argentina we have experienced many weeks of a good epidemiological situation but this changed in the last month. And this has a lot to do with the fact that care measures have been practically abandoned, from distancing ourselves to the use of a well-placed chinstrap, not meeting in closed spaces “, describes the infectious disease doctor. Javier Farina.
“We have to refocus on this. Even if Ómicron causes milder symptoms than the previous variants, that does not mean that if many people are infected, the probability indicates that the number of serious cases and deaths will also increase. So for the moment we have to be cautious and increase vaccination and care measures ”.
Meanwhile, the idea has spread on social networks and some media that if Ómicron caused fewer deaths, this would imply that the pandemic would be weakening. And this, in scientific terms, has no evidence to back it up.
“A downward trend in virus lethality has been observed over time, but this does not always follow a linear path. Even if Ómicron were a little less lethal, which we still do not know, that does not indicate that the next variant of this coronavirus is also so, “he warns Mario Lozano placeholder image, molecular virologist and former rector of the National University of Quilmes.
And he concludes: “That is why it is very important to emphasize that if we put selection pressure on the virus – and we do this by vaccinating ourselves – evolution is not linear because there is chance. So this is not immediate and something we can predict. In addition, even though Ómicron is less virulent, with the rate of infections it causes it ends up not being a harmless variant. Having a greater number of cases in a short time window can cause a saturation of the hospitals of the health system and that is why it is important to highlight that we must maintain the care we learned in these two years of pandemic: use of a chinstrap, social distancing, be in well-ventilated places, where carbon dioxide can be measured to ensure that the air breathed by other people does not accumulate and hand hygiene. And, fundamentally, increase the vaccination rate because the more vaccinated we are, if we become infected, we have more chances of having a mild or asymptomatic disease “.
