“The doubling rate of Omicron in some regions is now down to less than two days and I'm afraid we're also seeing the inevitable increase in hospitalizations, up by 10% nationally week on week and up by almost a third in London”, Boris Johnson just said in his briefing.
UK now boostering anyone over 18 whose second jab is more than 3 months ago.
"From tomorrow, we're speeding things up even further by removing the 15 minute post-vaccination waiting time. And while we're at it from Monday, 12 to 15 year olds can book in for a second jab."
Johnson really leaning into boostering:
“We're jabbing in hospitals, we're jabbing in surgeries, we're jabbing in pharmacies and in pop-up centers, we're jabbing in shopping centers and on high streets, in football stadiums... Wherever you are, we'll be there with a jab for you."
“I'm afraid we have to be realistic that records will be broken a lot over the next few weeks”, says Chris Whitty, CMO.
“What we've got is two epidemics on top of one another: an existing Delta epidemic roughly flat and a very rapidly growing omicron epidemic on top"
“Both the numbers but also the percentage of cases is steadily rising”, says Whitty.
"So an increasing percentage of all of our cases is now Omicron. But that's not because delta is going away. It's because Omicron is being built on top of that."
I’ll leave it at this.
It certainly feels like the WHO message of “It’s not vaccines alone. It’s vaccines AND” is falling on deaf ears in Downing Street. Will be interesting to see how a country fares that leans so heavily on boostering...

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More from @kakape

17 Dec
Going by what we know so far, places like Germany or the US are in for a world of trouble in the coming weeks.

So I want to make a few general points here once that go beyond the science (will do the rest later):
Firstly, why are we in trouble?
Forget everything else for a moment and just look at the growth rate of #omicron in places like Denmark and Norway. Look at London. This virus is moving fast. It spreads fast. And it will find those most vulnerable fast. ImageImageImage
Unfortunately, places like Germany and the US still have a lot of vulnerable people who are unvaccinated.
This variant will find those people fast and if it is anything like previous variants it will make a significant portion of these people very, very sick.
Read 18 tweets
16 Dec
As promised, a brief thread on main points from the Denmark paper in @Eurosurveillanc looking at the first 785 cases of #omicron in the country.

Paper is here:
eurosurveillance.org/content/10.280…
@Eurosurveillanc First off: Things are moving incredibly fast with #omicron.
This timeline gives a good overview of how fast things happened in Denmark:
eurosurveillance.org/content/table/… Image
@Eurosurveillanc One key finding: More than one in five cases cannot be linked to previous cases.
"This indicates that within 1.5 weeks from identifying the first case of #Omicron, there is already widespread community transmission in Denmark, which challenges further epidemic control."
Read 9 tweets
16 Dec
Two interesting papers on #omicron just out in @eurosurveillance:
One from Norway on THAT super spreading Christmas party in Oslo:
eurosurveillance.org/content/10.280…

One from Denmark on the first 785 #omicron cases there:
eurosurveillance.org/content/10.280…
Norway first:

117 people attended the party
99 had had two shots of mRNA vaccine (no-one boostered)
8 had recovered (unclear to me if they were vaccinated as well)
Everyone reported a negative rapid test before
81/110 (interviewed) people got Omicron, so the attack rate was a whopping 74%

As of December 13 "we detected nearly 70 other guests that were likely infected at the venue, and the Omicron variant
was detected in 53 of these through PCR variant
screening or sequencing"
Read 10 tweets
15 Dec
Here is the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board adding its voice:
"If governments and the public continue to focus on the severity of the variant, which is yet to be determined, there is a real risk that we miss the opportunity to prevent and slow down the spread of Omicron"
"Optimistic predictions are based on limited evidence, bringing false comfort and lulling some countries into a state of inaction. We cannot make the same mistakes again.”
gpmb.org/news/news/item…
“Curbing transmission of Omicron in the next few weeks is essential. Acting fast and erring on the side of caution is the right way forward. If we don’t act now, it will be too late.”

They call for 7 steps:
Read 6 tweets
15 Dec
Okay, one last quote from yesterday’s @WHO presser (and then I'll stop before people think this is actually Mike Ryan tweeting here).
He was talking about the many questions about #omicron that had no clear answer yet:
@WHO “Those answers will come”, @DrMikeRyan said.
"But in the meantime, we need to be ready to deal with what is likely to happen, which is a large wave of cases, which may or may not be more or less severe, but which will in themselves generate pressure in the health system"
@WHO @DrMikeRyan “We need to do what we can to stop that, to reduce that pressure in the system”, he said. "We need to protect those who need to be protected as quickly as possible. And we need to prepare our systems for that."
Read 5 tweets
15 Dec
New risk assessment from @ECDC_EU estimates that "based on modelling predictions, and depending on the growth advantage and level of immune escape, the Omicron VOC is likely to become the dominant variant in the EU/EEA within the first two months of 2022”

ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/…
@ECDC_EU "Even if the severity of disease caused by the Omicron VOC is equal or lower than the severity of the Delta VOC, the increased transmissibility and resulting exponential growth of cases will rapidly outweigh any benefits of a potentially reduced severity."
@ECDC_EU "Rapid reintroduction and strengthening of NPIs is necessary to reduce the ongoing Delta transmission, slow down the spread of the Omicron VOC and keep the COVID-19-related burden manageable."
Read 8 tweets

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