Collective immunity | A hope named Omicron

The highly contagious Omicron variant, which infects an impressive number of Quebecers in its path, will it provide us with collective immunity capable of putting an end to the pandemic? It is still too early to tell, say experts consulted by Press. We can nevertheless hope for a faster wave exit than last winter.

Ariane Krol
Press

If collective immunity “will certainly be our way out”, it remains to be seen whether it will come from the Omicron variant, summarizes virologist Benoit Barbeau, professor in the department of biological sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

“I would say possibly. I can’t tell you for sure: someone who would tell you this is someone you shouldn’t trust. We cannot be sure of anything, ”he emphasizes.

Described as “the most contagious virus ever seen” by D^r Jonathan Reiner of the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the Omicron variant causes countless infections, including in the double vaccinated population.

The large number of people infected with Omicron, combined with those who will have received a booster dose, could help achieve local herd immunity, scientists and politicians have said in recent weeks.

“We will move more quickly towards a scenario which will be closer to endemicity,” said Tuesday the head of the vaccine strategy of the European Medicines Agency, Marco Cavaleri.

“It is quite conceivable, and plausible”, that the United States arrives at “a degree of immunity in the community”, had already asserted the D^r Anthony Fauci, senior White House adviser on the health crisis, just before Christmas. “We hope to get there soon”, but it will first be necessary that the “some 50 million people eligible to be vaccinated who are not” go get their doses, he told the CBS network.

Omicron “will lead to enhanced immunity”, also estimated the Minister of Health of France, Olivier Véran, at the beginning of the year.

“It is possible” that collective immunity is reached with Omicron, but at the cost of so many infections that it would be better to obtain this immunity by vaccination, indicated at the same time the director general of the Ministry of Health of Israel, Nachman Ash.

Once the Omicron wave has passed, “the immunity thus built should give us a period of calm,” predicted Dr.^r Jeremy Farrar, director of the British Wellcome Foundation, at Financial Times at the end of the year.

It is “quite reasonable to think that the burden of COVID-19 could be reduced by 95% by 2022,” said Tim Colbourn, professor of epidemiology at University College London, in the same article. It would be according to him “a reasonable objective to put an end to the pandemic”.

Hockey hoped for in February

The United States, where the circulation of the virus is less hampered by health measures, will come out of the wave faster, predicts Professor Benoît Mâsse, of the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal. “At some point, 75 or 80% of Americans will have had the Omicron, and from those numbers, infections decrease dramatically because the virus has difficulty finding uninfected, or unvaccinated people without a dose of. reminder. The human cost is however likely to be high, he notes.

Quebec should, however, emerge from the wave faster than last winter, because hospitalizations tend to go down at the rate they are rising, said Mâsse.

Mr. Mâsse, one of whose sons plays hockey and the other is, like him, a referee in minor leagues, is hopeful of returning on the ice by the end of February. “We haven’t tightened our skates, we risk playing again,” he said.

The impact on the health system will however be much longer in Quebec, warns Professor Roxane Borgès Da Silva, of the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal. “We shed much more than in certain other regions of the world, we will have to do all this catching up,” she underlines.

Coming out of the Omicron wave, we will have to quickly “think about and better arm ourselves for the next winter seasons,” argues Mr. Barbeau, referring in particular to ventilation, antivirals and better masks.

It will also require vaccines that, much like those against influenza, incorporate several strains to target variants that may circulate during the season, say MM. Barbeau and Mâsse.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters