Milder Omicron an ‘evolutionary mistake’: Expert

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks to advanced pharmacy technician Jane Hosea during a visit to a vaccination centre in Northampton on January 6. Pic/AFP

The reduced severity of Omicron is good news for now, but it is the result of an "evolutionary mistake" as COVID-19 is transmitting very efficiently and there is no reason for it to become milder, indicating that the next variant could be more virulent, a leading Indian-origin scientist from the University of Cambridge has warned. Ravindra Gupta, Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases (CITIID), led a recent study on the Omicron variant and was among the first globally to describe the modified fusion mechanism of cells at play which might make Omicron more visible to the body's immune defences.

While the study showed that the new variant, dominant in the UK and now sweeping parts of India, is infecting the cells found in the lungs less, the virus itself is not intending to become milder.

A medical worker receives his third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre on January 6 in Tokyo. Pics/AP

"There is this assumption that viruses become more benign over time but that's not what's happening here because those are long-term evolutionary trends," Prof. Gupta told PTI in an interview on Thursday.

"SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) does not have that issue because it is transmitting very efficiently so it doesn't have any reason to become milder, especially in the era of vaccination with plenty of susceptible hosts. So that's why I think it's an evolutionary mistake. It's not something intentional that the virus is trying to do to change its biology," he explained.

(Right) Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson sits opposite Gordon Halfacre as he receives his COVID-19 vaccine from corporal Lorna MacDonald at a vaccination centre in Northampton on January 6. Pic/AFP

"This finding of reduced severity with Omicron is obviously good news for now but the next variant that comes, and there will be one, will not necessarily have these characteristics and could go back to the severity that we've seen before.

"And, in fact I think it probably will… Therefore, blocking infection is a potentially desirable thing to do rather than what I've heard, which is people seeing this as a natural vaccine. That is an understandable but dangerous thing to do because we don't understand the complete implications of different variants on our health," he said.

The scientist who advises the UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), keeping up the vaccination drive is important because that remains "our first line of defence" against the virus.

"Whilst we have a situation of a milder variant, we should use that as a chance to increase vaccination coverage," he said.

Military to help in the UK

British troops were deploying Friday to hospitals in London that are struggling to cope with "exceptional" staff shortages amid the surge in COVID-19 cases fuelled by the omicron variant.

The Ministry of Defense said that it was sending some 40 military medics and 160 general duty staff to plug staffing gaps caused by National Health Service personnel who are either ill or self-isolating amid the spike in coronavirus cases in the capital.

3,007
No. of Omicron cases in India

Pandemic sidelines 800 policemen and firefighters in LA

Los Angeles city Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday that more than 500 LAPD officers and other police employees and nearly 300 firefighters were off-duty after testing positive for COVID-19, though he said measures were being taken to ensure the safety of the public. "This is an incredibly tough moment," Garcetti said. "The omicron variant has taken off like wildfire."

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