"It is likely that the behavior of the Omicron variant will also be the same in our country, with strong growth in cases. The growth trend of the variant is in fact proving to be the same in all countries, but we do not yet have certain data as we perform fewer sequences than the others ".
Thus Walter Ricciardi, consultant to the Minister of Health.
Omicron, Ricciardi said in a tweet, will be "prevalent in the United Kingdom and Denmark within the week: in London it already represents 40% of cases".
The alarm about a possible new strong wave of positive cases also comes from the WHO.
"I think we are facing a tsunami of contagions in the world, both for Delta (the dominant variant in recent months) and for Omicron", specified the technical manager for the Covid pandemic of the World Health Organization, Maria van Kerkhove. .
"I repeat to the governments - he explains in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País -: do not wait to act. And I am not referring to confinements. Before starting to see an increase in hospitalizations, please use masks, favor teleworking. , limit contacts with other people, avoid meetings, invest in ventilation, increase surveillance of virus genomes and prepare your hospitals. "
In the last few hours, the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, reiterated the invitation to proceed quickly with the vaccination campaign as "the third doses are even more important to deal with the Omicron variant", he explained, "we are seeing it from the data arriving ".
Meanwhile, a study published in South Africa claims that two doses of Pfizer's Covid vaccine offer approximately 70% protection against severe Omicron variant disease. The study is based on the results of 78,000 PCR tests performed in South Africa between November 15 and December 7 and was conducted by South Africa's leading private health insurance company, Discovery, together with the South African Medical Research Council.
(Unioneonline / vl)
