Omicron is proving to be a ‘very slippery’ variant, confounding the world’s best medical and epidemiological experts.
“Omicron is arguably one of the most different variants that we have isolated and looked at over 2021,” says Associate Professor Stuart Turville from the Kirby Institute, the first Australian lab that has reviewed real-world samples from NSW cases.
The doubling rate of omicron has been estimated at around 2.5 days, which is what has seen the public health group at UNSW to project NSW could be facing 25,000 cases a day by the end of January. In NSW, an estimated 60 per cent of new cases are infected with the omicron variant. It is taking over from the delta outbreak that had largely been plateauing as widespread vaccine coverage suppressed case growth, despite the state reopening.
If NSW cases start to consistently fall below the seven-day average, it will be an early signal that it and possibly the rest of Australia could see a sharp, but shorter summer outbreak.Professor Turville says the severity of omicron remains a key question that is slowly being answered as hospitalisation rates edge upwards amid a large increase in cases across the world.
In Australia, all eyes are on NSW where hospitalisation and ICU ratios to cases are the key metrics leaders are watching.
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