New COVID Variant Triggers Alarm, US Places Travel Restrictions On Countries In Southern Africa

NEW YORK, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Nov, 2021 ) :The United States is reacting to the omicron variant of the coronavirus much faster than the sluggish response to Delta variant, which originated in India, placing immediate restrictions on flights from countries from Southern Africa, where the new variant was first detected, and issuing fresh calls to citizens to get vaccinated and keep using masks.

Omicron was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday as COVID-19 cases in South Africa spiked to thousands per day. By Friday, it had been named and labeled a "variant of concern," the most serious type.

No cases of Omicron have been identified in the US to date, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. The agency expects that it would identify the variant quickly if it emerges in the US.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease specialist and chief White House medical adviser, told NBC tv network on Saturday he "would not be surprised" if the variant were already in the US.

"When you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility and you're already having travel-related cases that they've noted in Israel and Belgium and other places, when you have a virus like this, it almost invariably is ultimately going to go essentially all over," Fauci said.

Asked about next moves to deal with the Omicron threat, US Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters the administration would take it "one step at a time".

"For now we've done what we think is necessary," she said.

The White House said senior health officials and its Covid response team were monitoring the latest updates on Omicron and were in regular touch with officials around the world.

In New York, one of the states hit hardest and earliest by Covid-19, the governor announced a state of emergency steps aimed at limiting a new winter wave of infections as transmission rates approach those of April 2020.

New York has recorded more than 2.7m cases of Covid-19 and more than 57,000 deaths, the fourth highest state death toll, behind California, Texas and Florida.

That will kickstart studies over the next few weeks into its contagiousness, virulence, and "immune escape," which is its ability to resist an immune response from prior infections or from vaccines, emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University Dr.

Leana Wen said.

"The level of alarm at this point is completely appropriate," Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University, told USA TODAY.

"I would much rather that we take action and then find out that, actually this this variant does respond very well to the vaccines that we have." Early data is troubling, but incomplete, experts say.

The outbreak of the omicron variant in South Africa was like a "vertical line," according to Dr. Eric Topol, vice president for research at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.

"We haven't seen anything like that," he told USA TODAY. "The line of slope is much higher than the initial delta line." Topol said the number of concerning mutations to the virus may make it more contagious than previous variants, and that it is likely to have evolved in an immunocompromised person.

Scientists are still waiting on lab studies to determine how well coronavirus antibodies -- either from natural infection or vaccines -- hold up against Omicron. They're also watching carefully to see how quickly the variant spreads across the globe, particularly in countries with higher vaccination rates," reported business Insider on Saturday.

Moderna, BioNTech-Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson all said that they're testing how well their vaccines protect against Omicron.

Merck said on Friday in a final analysis of a clinical trial, its antiviral pill reduced the risk of hospitalization and death among high-risk COVID-19 patients by 30 percent, down from an earlier estimate of 50 percent.

"News of the Omicron variant, which has an unusually high number of mutations, will certainly throw a spanner in the works for the Biden administration as the president struggles with flagging approval ratings and a pessimistic view of the economy," reported CNN on Friday. "The administration will need to work quickly to get ahead of the new variant."The pandemic is far from over, and after nearly two years and more than 775,000 deaths, many Americans are traumatized and on edge, said the television network, adding that with the variants stymying hopes of a full recovery, "it has become increasingly difficult to embrace any good news, as fear and uncertainty continue to dictate so much of our lives."