(Geneva) “There is no reason to doubt” that the current vaccines protect patients infected with the Omicron variant against severe forms of COVID-19, said Tuesday Michael Ryan, the emergency manager of the WHO, in an interview with AFP.
“We have some very effective vaccines that have been shown to be potent against all of the variants so far, in terms of disease severity and hospitalization, and there is no reason to believe that would not be the case.” with Omicron, explained Dr Ryan, in a rare one-on-one interview.
“The general behavior we are seeing so far shows no increase in severity. In fact, some places in southern Africa are reporting milder symptoms ”, also declared the doctor, like what had said a little earlier the eminent American scientist Anthony Fauci, also to AFP.
“We are at the very beginning, we have to be very careful in our way of analyzing” these data, however said Dr. Ryan, taking care to emphasize on several occasions that we were at the very beginning of the studies of a variant detected only on November 24 by South African authorities and which has since been spotted in dozens of countries.
The appearance of this variant has caused some panic, especially in Europe which is already in the grip of a massive fifth wave of COVID-19 cases caused by the Delta variant.
The best protection
The Irish epidemiologist – who has fought deadly diseases like Ebola and Marburg virus disease in the field and has been on the front lines against COVID-19 since its detection at the end of 2019 – estimated that the first information gathered in South Africa ” suggest that the vaccine appears to be holding up well in terms of protection ”.
He admitted, however, that vaccines may be less effective against Omicron, which is characterized by a very high number of mutations in the spike protein, which allows the virus to attach itself to cells before invading them to multiply.
But “it is highly improbable” that the variant can completely escape the protection conferred by vaccines.
“The preliminary data we have from South Africa does not show that we are losing efficiency to catastrophic proportions,” he said, adding: “In fact, it is even the opposite right now. “.
“The best weapon we have now is to get vaccinated,” he repeated, as he and his colleagues have been doing for a year now and the start of vaccination campaigns.
This new variant, named after the Greek alphabet after being classified almost immediately as “worrying” by the WHO, is probably more easily transmitted. “When a new variant appears, it tends to be more transmissible, because it competes with the previous variants,” explains Dr. Ryan.
And we can imagine that Omicron takes precedence over Delta, which has been responsible for most of the infections in the world since it was spotted in India at the end of 2020.
The rules remain the same
But it is possible that Omicron is spreading so quickly in South Africa because it “exploits a decline in transmission from Delta,” he believes.
And there are also early signs that the new variant may more easily infect people who have been vaccinated or those who have already had COVID-19.
“There is data that re-infections are more frequent with Omicron than with previous waves or variants,” explains the doctor, hastening to add that the vaccines were designed to protect the more serious forms of the disease. disease and not necessarily against those which are more benign.
“What interests us is not so much whether we can be re-infected with Omicron, but whether the new infections are more or less severe,” he emphasizes.
And above all, he insists on the need to continue practicing barrier gestures: wearing a mask, ventilating the premises, social distancing, etc.
“The virus has not changed in nature,” warns Dr. Ryan, “the rules of the game remain the same”.