South Africa finds omicron 'highly transmissible' and more resistant to COVID-19 vaccines
Source: USA Today
The new omicron variant is substantially more contagious and reduces the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, but people who are fully vaccinated are still largely protected against severe disease, according to a study from South Africa released Tuesday. The variant, which is believed to have emerged this fall in southern Africa, looks poised to take over the world, as delta did before it. Omicron accounts for 90% of COVID-19 cases in South Africa and is a growing problem in Europe. It has been seen in at least 30 U.S. states, though the delta variant still dominates the American outbreak.
Formally identified only the day before Thanksgiving, information on omicron's characteristics – including how contagious and dangerous it may be – are just emerging. The new study from Discovery Health, South Africa's largest private health insurer, shows that two shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which provided over 90% protection against infection with the original version of the virus is only 33% protective against anyomicron infection.Full vaccination continues to provide 70% protection against severe disease, which seemed to hold up across high-risk groups, though it declined somewhat in people over 60 and even more in those over 70.
"This is the first time we've had any data on that," said Dr. Eric Topol, vice president for research at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and a national expert on the use of data in medical research. "Seventy percent is definitely a dropdown. It isn't great," he said. "It was 95% effective severe disease when it was delta variant and then about 85% after six months of waning," he said. Whether those numbers will continue to hold as more patients with omicron are studied isn't yet clear, he said. "This is all still so new."
Children continue to show a relatively low rate of infection with omicron, as they have with earlier variants, the study showed. Children infected with omicron have so far had a 20% higher risk of hospital admission for complications than they did with earlier variants, according to Shirley Collie, chief health analytics actuary at Discovery Health. “This is early data and requires careful follow up," Collie said in a company press release. But the finding lines up with an earlier warning from South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases of an increase in hospital admissions for children under 5.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/14/covid-omicron-south-africa-study/6502201001/
= new reply since forum marked as read
CDC has indicated that at this point, "fully vaccinated" is "2 weeks after the 2nd dose" of the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) and "2 weeks after the 1-dose Janssen (J&J)".
The "boosters" ("3rd or 4th dose" in a series) had more narrowed criteria (i.e., so far the youngest sets aren't authorized for anything beyond 2 doses of Pfizer), so I think that is why they stopped at the initial series being "fully vaccinated".
I expect that might change eventually as more data comes in and they are better able to tweak how to utilize these vaccines for the long term (including the timing between doses).
FDA had general "minimum" criteria for vaccine approvals related to vaccine efficacy, and in the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, basically meant that they be shown to be at least "50% effective". This is knowing that, for example, flu shots can range from 30% - 70% effective from year to year.
This type of thing is rarely raked through the coals in the media and general public and vaccine research and approvals have been on-going for probably 3/4 of a century. But because of the severity of this virus and its pandemic, the vaccine development, trialing, and approval process (the "sausage-making" ) has spilled out into the lay public and has sadly caused all kinds expectations that were never "the norm".
I.e., "the norm" is to have several years of trials to determine true safety and efficacy over the long term and then the approvals would ensue. The emergency that we have been in accelerated that process, although that was boosted by the fact that such vaccine research and preliminary trials had already been underway after the initial SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in 2003, so vaccine makers actually had something in the pipeline to use as a starting point for developing a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
As a hard-to-fathom note - although the COVID-19 virus and its variants have been significantly more lethal than other viruses like the flu, COVID-19 is a "coronavirus" like some of the coronaviruses that are causes of "the common cold" and we certainly have no vaccine to prevent us from catching "the common cold" (SARS-CoV-2 is like a lethal rogue version of that). And we have no "herd immunity" against "the common cold", which is why I continue to rant and rave about that term being used in this instance. 
In fact, I heard (IIRC) one of the local CDC ACIP members who is here in Philly mention something about now needing something like "90% - 95% vaccination" to get there - which IMHO means there really is no such thing as "herd immunity" for this. 
The one fascinating thing here is that with more mRNA research, we might be able to target "the common cold" one of these days and that is fantastic. 
And South Africa primarily had Beta, quickly supplanted by Delta, and now Omicron, so not sure where they were getting that from regarding little Delta in South Africa (the below was from S.A.'s Director of CERI (Centre for Epidemic Response & innovation)) -
Link to tweet
@Tuliodna
·
Nov 25, 2021
Replying to @Tuliodna
This new variant is really worrisome at the mutational level. South Africa and Africa will need support (financially, public health, scientific) to control it so it does not spread in the world. Our poor and deprived population can not be in lockdown without financial support.
Image
Tulio de Oliveira
@Tuliodna
This new variant, B.1.1.529 seems to spread very quick! In less than 2 weeks now dominates all infections following a devastating Delta wave in South Africa (Blue new variant, now at 75% of last genomes and soon to reach 100%)
Image
11:44 AM · Nov 25, 2021
This is in contrast to places like here in the U.S. where Alpha (and previously the wild type) was the dominate strain before Delta -
Much of the emphasis had been to do this for the vulnerable older people and those with immuno-deficiencies - and probably because the earliest variants were not impacting children as much except for slowly-growing cases of MIS-C (Multi-Inflammatory Syndrome in Children), so they were de-emphasized.
But now the later variants seem to be more serious for certain children, so it's hard deal with being in the middle of a mess, and trying to be flexible and agile enough to pivot the guidance in a believable way. And that's probably because it seems that all of the training and experience learned during previous pandemics, have basically been near-useless when it has come to dealing with this virus.
I think there are various factions that are at play, from the "don't overdo it with treatments that might not be needed" crowd vs the "we need to get ahead of this due to some not-so-good signals we are seeing" bunch vs the "all big pharma wants to do is make money so why are we doing this at all?" group.
Years from now when they finally do a "Lessons Learned" exercise, I don't know how much different they might recommend that things be than what we see happening now, other than correcting the idiocy of the early days.
(and I will still rant and rave about the term "herd immunity" because we do NOT have "herd immunity" against "the common cold" and this thing is basically a more dangerous lethal version of that viral "cold" component, being a mutated freak coronavirus)
And although it is far from 100% here in Philly, at least where I am, people have adjusted to the indoor mask mandate that we have had since early August. The more it becomes a "habit" - at least when going inside some public facility - the easier it is to keep that habit going and slowing the transmissions - even if only 70% are masked (or wearing them correctly).
It has made such a big difference here, even with the inevitable post-Thanksgiving bump that we are having like everywhere else, that the media here is still having a hard time trying to wrap their pens around because they love the click-bait negativity against the city.
Based on the NYT's tracker, Philadelphia County (city), as the most populous county in PA at ~1.6 million residents, currently has the 2nd lowest per-capita (per 100,000) rate in the entire state (41) behind Cameron County, which is the least populous county in the state at ~4,600 residents, which has the lowest per-capita in the state (36) at the moment.
And this is our actual vaccination rate breakdown so far -
Link to tweet
@PHLPublicHealth
December 13, 2021 COVID-19 vax update:
945,139 residents fully vaxxed
76.1% of adults fully vaxxed
70.5% of residents 12+ fully vaxxed
95% of adults have at least 1 dose
88% of residents 12+ have at least 1 dose
17.4% of 5-11 have at least 1 dose
➡️ http://ow.ly/Kkqn50F9Zr0
Image
12:30 PM · Dec 13, 2021