Thread by @Ayjchan

Just started: a discussion among virologists and evolutionary biology experts on the new Omicron variant, looking at data in the early days.
twitter.com/i/spaces/1YpKk…

Live tweeting some of the salient points:

There is not yet clear data on disease severity although there are concerns that the large number of mutations could possibly confer transmission advantage or immune evasion.

If we see novel variants e.g. Omicron replacing previous variants, it can suggest transmission advantage. But if this has only happened in one area, it could be due to a chance event. We need to see if the same thing happens in other countries where the variant has been detected.

We have only seen a few hundred cases of Omicron (and we don't know if they're mostly young travelers for example, rather than older folks), so it's not yet possible to know if Omicron causes milder disease. It takes a few weeks for severe outcomes to develop.

Once more labs around the world isolate the Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant, they will be able to test if antibodies against previous variants are still effective against Omicron.

The current data on hospitalizations cannot substantiate confident conclusions about severity of the disease in vaccinated or unvaccinated individuals.

So far there are no signs that vaccination would not confer partial protection against severe disease and death by Omicron.

The worry is that if Omicron is very transmissible, it could lead to widespread infection; even with mostly mild cases, the relatively low % of cases with severe outcomes would still overwhelm the medical infrastructure (hospitals and healthcare workers).

We have to expect new variants in the future. We have to cope with that and not overreact (e.g., the stock market). Vaccine companies can rapidly update their vaccines based on surveillance of circulating variants.

Vaccines and public health measures still work against new variants. My addition: #COVIDisAirborne

We need to demonstrate international solidarity to incentivize transparency and problem-solving.

Travel bans only work in limited scenarios, e.g., island countries like Australia and NZ, and only for short periods of time, but if travel bans are applied recklessly, we will end up deterring countries from reporting emerging variants. This would be a worst case scenario.

The virus depends on our behavior to transmit. Even if not Omicron, your personal decisions can help to reduce transmission of Delta and other variants in your community, and prevent overwhelming your local hospitals and healthcare workers.

I only just figured out how to request to speak on Twitter space but I wanted to ask how rich countries can and should help developing countries with monitoring emerging variants #InternationalSolidarity

If you look at the amount of sequencing+data sharing relative to case numbers per country, it's very clear that we are not sequencing enough in some regions of the world (light green).

Visualized with covidcg.org @CovidCg