People infected with earlier variants of Covid don’t appear to be defended against Omicron, although vaccination will still help serious illness, a top South African scientist said Thursday.
“We believe that former infection doesn’t give protection from Omicron,” said Anne von Gottberg, an expert at the National Institute for Communicable Conditions.
Outlining early exploration into the recently- surfaced variant, she said croakers were seeing”an increase for Omicron reinfections.”
This trend was also seen in models which projected those cases against the overall population, she said in a news conference with the World Health Organization’s Africa region.
“We believe the number of cases will increase exponentially in all businesses of the country,”she said.
“We believe that vaccines will still still cover against severe complaint,”she added.
“Vaccines have always held out to cover against serious complaint, hospitalisations and death.”
The new variant, first reported to the WHO a week before, has popped up across mainlands.
WHO experts reiterated calls for a reevaluate on trip bans against southern Africa, given that Omicron had now been reported in nearly two dozen countries and its source remained unclear.
“South Africa and Botswana detected the variant. We do not know where the origin of this could have been,” said specialist Ambrose Talisuna.”To discipline people who are just detecting or reporting. is illegal.”
Inmid-November, South Africa was reporting about 300 cases a day. On Wednesday the country reported new cases, over from the day ahead and on Monday.