Omicron variant possibly less severe, says study

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Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 19

A new study has shown possible less severity of the Omicron variant even though researchers have cautioned that more data was needed to unravel the potentialities of the variant that has spread to over 91 nations.

Count crosses 150

Omicron count rose to 151 after M’rashtra reported six new cases, while an NRI and a boy, who arrived in Gujarat from the UK, tested positive.

The research by leading UK-based microbiologist Ravi Gupta provides a mechanistic plausibility to a finding that Omicron is growing poorly in lungs as compared to airway cells, potentially making it more upper respiratory tract infection than pneumonia.

He said the researchers tested how well antibodies from vaccinated individuals neutralised Omicron versus Delta. “We found Omicron was poorly neutralised after two doses of mRNA or ad vectored vaccine compared to Delta, but that the third dose of (mRNA) rescued this at an early time point. In summary, this work suggests that Omicron does appear to have become more immune evasive, but that properties associated with disease progression may be attenuated to some extent. The significant growth of Omicron nevertheless represents a major public health challenge,” Gupta said, signalling possible low severity of Omicron.

Anurag Agarwal, Director, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, said Omicron may need more receptor density to infect and cause less cell-cell infusion.