Although the delta variant spreads faster, at most it "scratches the patients' throats a little" - i.e. the Omikron variant did not bring doomsday either. At least among the infected in South Africa, the new, omicron version of the coronavirus has not caused any serious illness so far, said Angelique Coetzee, president of the South African Medical Association yesterday.
The omicron virus variant, which contains significant mutations compared to previous coronavirus variants, was first identified in South Africa, but since then some copies have also been found in Europe.
Angelique Coetzee told the Sunday political magazine program of the British public television BBC that patients who came to her appointments with unusual but extremely mild symptoms, mainly muscle pains and exhaustion, tested positive for the coronavirus.
Coetzee emphasized: so far, none of the South Africans infected with the omicron virus variant have needed hospital treatment, the South African patients who show symptoms usually do not even have a serious sore throat, they do not suffer from a cough, "at most their throats scratch a little", and they have not lost their taste. - and neither does their sense of smell.
Professor Coetzee answered yes to the reporter's question as to whether, based on all of this, foreign countries announcing rapid and radical tightening measures "panicked unnecessarily". He added, however, that in two weeks it will be possible to know more about the new virus variant.
Andrew Pollard, the head of the vaccine development department at the University of Oxford, who also led the development of the coronavirus vaccine for the university and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, told BBC radio on Saturday: it is extremely unlikely that the omicron variant will restart the coronavirus pandemic. According to Professor Pollard, there is reason to trust that the current vaccines will continue to protect against serious diseases caused by the coronavirus infection.
Source: Origo/MTI
