Omicron is holding the pandemic centre stage. If everyone eligible for a booster went out and had it tomorrow, we might keep a lid on the latest wave
‘Masks, boosters and general precautions won’t stop Omicron, but will reduce our risk of reinfection and help us get through winter.’‘Masks, boosters and general precautions won’t stop Omicron, but will reduce our risk of reinfection and help us get through winter.’Last modified on Sun 10 Jul 2022 03.55 BSTWe had been prepared for the virus remaining in our communities, but Omicron has taken this to a different level. This is what “vaccine-escape” looks like.
Immune escape undermines the immune system’s ability to ward off an infection, but thankfully we still have enough cross immunity from vaccination, infection, or both, to reduce our risk of serious illness. In the peak last January, we had more than 50 times the infections reported in the Delta wave, but only one-third more people in ICU., and all its subvariant spinoffs, is that an Omicron infection does boost our immunity against coronavirus infection, just not against Omicron.
This different infection world we find ourselves in now is the same challenge faced across the globe. We were ahead for a while in current infection rates as the northern hemisphere went into summer, and are currently sitting behind France, New Zealand and Singapore. We drop to 16th in the world when we look at the latest data on new death reports per capita, behind European countries still in summer.
If we matched Canada or Denmark’s death rates, we would have had nearly 30,000 Covid-19 deaths in Australia by now, 45,000 with German rates, or 70,000 with UK.
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