New variant not expected to make this winter worse than last
ROCKINGHAM — With the World Health Organization naming the Omicron variant of COVID-19 a new “variant of concern” on Friday, local health officials have shared some of the early information they have about it and what, if anything, the public should change about their current behavior with regard to the virus.
Richmond County Health Director Cheryl Speight said that an increase in COVID-19 cases is to be expected with colder temperatures and the holidays causing people to be more likely to be indoors with larger groups. But, like with the Delta variant, local healthcare workers aren’t able to determine whether a positive case is the original strain of COVID-19, the Delta variant, Omicron, or the others that cropped up in recent months.
Speight received information from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Monday evening which stated that Omicron is likely to be identified in North Carolina soon and that the current vaccines are still expected to still be effective against it.
“Omicron has rapidly replaced the Delta variant across South Africa. This suggests it could be more transmissible. It has been detected in a growing list of countries but as of last night, Omicron has not been detected in the US, however, it is likely the variant is already here,” Speight said in an email Tuesday. “We anticipate that Omicron will be identified in the U.S. and in N.C. in the coming days and weeks. To date, there are no lab studies that determine whether and to what degree Omicron can evade immunity from the vaccine or past infection.”
“It is expected that vaccines currently authorized in the U.S. will remain effective against severe outcomes, however, there is no actual data yet of vaccine effectiveness, transmissibility, or illness severity at this time,” she continued.
Speaking in a Zoom conference on Monday, Dr. Christopher Ohl, an infectious disease expert with Atrium Health, said that Omicron’s recent behavior has surprised experts in recent weeks, leading to its new designation and the implementation of some travel restrictions where early outbreaks have been identified. The concern is that this variant could be more contagious and will “complicate” the prediction models for the holiday season, but Ohl said he doesn’t think spread this winter will be anywhere near as bad as it was in late 2020 nor during the Delta variant surge over the summer.
“The Omicron variant is a fairly highly-mutated variant that took us by surprise over the last week not only by the number of mutations but by the fact that they all occurred together in one variant,” as opposed to these mutations being spread out over multiple variants, Ohl told the roughly two dozen media members via Zoom. “There’s over 30 mutations, of which about eight of them or so are in the spike region binding area, which raises some concern that its transmission abilities may be different than what we’ve seen so far from other variants and also it could give it the potential for immune evasion.”
In response to a question from Axios Charlotte about whether people should bother getting vaccinated if new variants keep cropping up, Ohl emphatically stated that people should still get vaccinated regardless.
“It’s very unlikely that this variant, even if it has some way to evade parts of our immune responses, that it will be a complete evasion,” he said, comparing it to Delta which caused more breakthrough infections among the vaccinated. “My prediction would be that [the vaccine] will still largely prevent hospitalizations and serious disease, and if you’ve been boosted then it will give you even more protection from Omicron.”
The Centers for Disease Control continue to recommend that everyone wear masks in public indoor settings or in areas of high community transmission, wash their hands regularly, and maintain physical distance from others outside of your household. Additionally, the CDC recommends that everyone 5 years and older get fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and that those who are eligible get the booster shot.
In touting the effectiveness of the boosters, Ohl explained that the boosters increase the number and breadth of the antibodies that the recipient’s body has to fight off the virus, and the variant still has many places that are vulnerable to the vaccine despite its mutations. At this early stage, Ohl said there is still more to learn about the variant’s behavior, but agreed with the WHO’s assessment.
“There may be more panic than what’s necessary at this time but it’s certainly a ‘variant of concern’ — and has been labeled as that by the WHO — so we’re going to have to figure it out,” Ohl said. “I don’t think it will be anywhere near the height of the surges that we had last year or even, potentially, from the Delta variant from August and September, but we’ll have to keep an eye on what this new variant could mean for particularly the tail end of the respiratory season.”