OMICRON: What You Need to Know!

hi and welcome to another edition of

your health with dr christie

my name is dr christy reisinger and

today we're going to talk about the

omicron variant i'm going to start by

saying there's still a lot we don't know

and data is coming in slowly and

steadily as we learn more about the

omicron variant of the sars kov2 virus

the recent thanksgiving weekend was a

bit overshadowed that there was a newly

identified covet 19 variant of concern

that's been called omicron it was first

detected in south africa but that does

not necessarily mean that that's where

it started that's simply the country

with good surveillance capacities to

test for variants effectively the

omicron variant is already in the united

states the first detected case was a few

days ago but i assume that it's already

been circulating in the u.s for even

longer than that and thankfully the

person with covid from the omicron

variant had mild symptoms and is

recovering quickly furthermore the very

latest data that we have from south

africa has shown that most people

infected with omicron so far have

relatively mild symptoms and tend to be

younger adults in south africa the

people that are being hospitalized still

remain the ones that are not vaccinated

but it's still too early to make the

blanket statement that omicron causes

less severe disease in most vaccinated

people i hope that this is the case but

we just don't know yet and from an

evolutionary standpoint it would make

sense that mutations in the virus that

cause it to be more infectious but less

deadly to human hosts will become the

dominant strains over time because the

virus needs to continue to infect human

hosts to continue to replicate and

survive if it kills the host it infects

it's less likely to be able to infect

others as i've mentioned before

variants are common in any respiratory

virus and sars cov2 is no different

variants come and go until one like

delta becomes the dominant strain

because it has something about it that

makes it more able to infect others more

effectively the delta variant was more

transmissible than the others we're

still waiting to see if omicron will

fade away and delta will remain the

dominant strain or if omicron will take

over because remember that there have

been other prior variants of concern

such as beta and mu for example that had

the ability to partially evade the

body's immune defenses but they never

became a serious threat to the world

because they did not transmit from one

person to another very easily but the

concern with omicron arose when it was

discovered that this variant had even

more mutations and included many of the

mutations found in other strains that

have made them more transmissible and

more antibody resistant remember that

the spike protein is the chief target of

antibodies that the immune system

produces to fight a cova-19 infection

and so having so many mutations raises

concerns that omicron spike protein

might be able to evade antibodies

produced by either previous infection or

vaccination but knowing about these

mutations does not necessarily translate

to a more severe infection in the real

world we just have to wait a bit longer

to see how this plays out as more people

contract covid from the omicron variant

at this point we just don't know how

effective the vaccines or natural

immunity from a previous coveted

infection are to this variant my best

guess is that the vaccines or natural

immunity may have a decreased

effectiveness but it's just not clear

how decreased that will be and it

doesn't mean that vaccines don't work at

all but it is interesting to note that

moderna pfizer johnson and johnson and

astrazeneca are all poised to develop

boosters to target new variants

including ones like omicron these

vaccine developers knew all along that

at some point there would be a variant

that would likely be able to more

effectively evade the vaccine protection

coveted 19 cases have started to slowly

creep back up again and in about a week

we'll know how the thanksgiving holiday

gatherings and travel have contributed

and then a week after that we'll see how

hospitalization rates are affected by

this but scientists and vaccine

developers still have hope that even if

a variant like omicron can evade the

first line of defense from the vaccine

which is anti-body production there will

still be protection that it cannot avoid

from the second line of defense from t

cells that are also produced by the

vaccine this is an answer that will be

coming in the next few weeks the big

picture that i continue to take away

from this is seeing that there's still

such a discrepancy between rich and poor

countries and their ability to vaccinate

their citizens while we know that

vaccinations do not eliminate the

possibility of contracting covid we do

know based on a recent article published

in the lancet at the end of october that

vaccinations do lessen the risk of a

covet infection but doesn't eliminate it

completely but when someone that's

vaccinated gets covid they clear the

virus more quickly and both of these

contribute to less virus circulating and

when there's less virus circulating

there's less chance for mutations to

develop so countries with no vaccines

are not able to curb the spread of covet

in any meaningful way and cannot protect

their most vulnerable citizens so as i

continue to say if you're not vaccinated

please get vaccinated and if you're

fully vaccinated but are due for a

booster soon you might wait just a week

or two longer to see how the omicron

variant responds to the current vaccines

because if it's able to evade them

easily we'll see vaccine developers

develop a booster that can fight this

new variant and possibly others in the

future and we've been told that this

should take a few months to develop

thanks for joining me