Omicron advanced around the world on Thursday, with health experts warning of a fight against the Covid-19 variant, despite two drugmakers saying their vaccines are safe and indicating it carries a low risk of hospitalization. Is.
Wherever the highly contagious Omicron variant has spread, coronavirus infections have soared, leading to new restrictions and new cases in many countries.
But in another glimmer of hope two days before Christmas, a US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) official said data indicated that both Merck & Company Inc. (MRK.N) and Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) Covid-19 anti-virals are effective. against variants.
There were also encouraging signs about hospitalization rates from Britain and South Africa, although the head of a major African health agency joined the World Health Organization and warned it was too early to draw broad conclusions.
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“We are careful not to extrapolate what we are seeing in South Africa to the entire continent or around the world,” said John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Still, yields on US stock indexes and US Treasuries both climbed on Thursday, partly on renewed optimism Omicron helped prop up market volatility in the last month of 2021.
“Today is a very quiet day. Omicron is apparently relieved not to be as bad as we feared,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at LPL Financial.
Even if Omicron has made its mark on some parts of the US economy, economists say it is unlikely to halt upward-trend growth for the second year in a row so far.
First identified last month in southern Africa and Hong Kong, Omicron is taking effect in much of Europe, including the UK, where daily new infections have exceeded 100,000.
France had its worst day in terms of new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, registering more than 91,000, while Germany reported its first Omicron death.
In Italy, the first Western country to be hit by the pandemic last year, all public New Year’s Eve celebrations were banned, while Greece banned public Christmas celebrations. Both countries have also made it mandatory to wear outdoor masks.
In the United States, millions of Americans carry on with holidays, including cross-country flights. Officials said 2,081,297 passengers were screened through the country’s airports on Wednesday, an increase of 144,000 compared to the same date in 2019 before the pandemic.
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Omicron has only done so slowly since hospitalizations and deaths increased in South Africa and the UK, and AstraZeneca (AZN.L) and Novavax (NVX.O) joined other manufacturers in saying that their Shots protect against this.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, who tracked 22,205 Omicron patients, said on Wednesday that Delta patients had 68% fewer hospitalizations based on rates, which were lower than they expected.
Researchers at Imperial College London reported evidence of a comparatively 40%-45% reduction in the risk of hospitalization.
Britain on Thursday reported a record number of new coronavirus cases, with the daily tally reaching 119,789. But an analysis of preliminary data by the UK Health Protection Agency showed that a person with Omicron was 31% to 45% less likely to be hospitalized, and 50% to 70% less likely to be admitted, compared to someone with DELTA. was likely to happen.
UKHSA boss Jenny Harris said this was “an encouraging early sign”, but added: “This is early data and more research is needed to confirm these findings”.
In Washington, the FDA authorized Merck’s anti-viral pill for some high-risk adult patients, a day after Pfizer moved to a similar treatment.
Both pills worked, said Patrizia Cavazzoni, a top FDA official, adding that both interfere with how the virus replicates, a process that is not changed in different variants.
‘Don’t overexplain’
Scientists have warned that with the rise in cases in the UK, even a small fraction of those hospitalized could overwhelm the healthcare system.
In the US Midwest, hospitals are “preparing for the worst” in Omicron’s rapid spread, with their personnel already severely strained by the wave of the Delta version.
The British data supported the findings from South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
A separate South African government-backed study on healthcare workers given the Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) vaccine, yet to be peer-reviewed, found “clear and early de-coupling” of hospitalizations from Omicron cases compared to Delta ” has been identified.
AstraZeneca said a three-course dose of its vaccine offered protection against the variant, citing data from an Oxford University laboratory study.
The study’s findings, not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, match those of rivals Pfizer-BioNtech (pfe.n), (22UAy.DE) and Moderna (mRNA.o).
Novavax (NVX.O) also said that early data suggests that its vaccine – authorized for use by the European Union and WHO but not yet approved by the United States – produced an immune response against Omicron. does.
But the old Delta variant is lurking.
The coronavirus death toll in Russia, where authorities had detected only 41 omicron cases, crossed 600,000 on Thursday, a Reuters count based on official data showed, following a surge of delta-linked infections.
Only the United States and Brazil have recorded more deaths from the coronavirus.
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