Roving Periscope: Europe had Omicron before SA; spreads to 23 nations
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Exactly two years after the first case of Covid-19 was detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, that sinking feeling has gripped the world once again with Omicron, the latest variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, dramatically spreading to over two dozen countries within a week of its detection, and forcing several countries, including India, to start re-imposing restrictions.
According to reports, the variant was present in Europe before South Africa detected it on November 24. In South Africa, fresh cases of Covid-19 nearly doubled in a day (from 4,373 to 8,561) on Wednesday, signaling a sudden surge in the country that complains it is being punished for alerting the world.
“There is a possibility that really we’re going to be seeing a serious doubling or tripling of the cases as we move along or as the week unfolds,” Dr. Nicksy Gumede-Moeletsi, regional virologist for the World Health Organization (WHO), said. “There is a possibility that we are going to see a vast increase in the number of cases being identified in South Africa.”
But China, accused of being the global nursery of the pandemic, is gearing up to hold the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February 2022 “smoothly”. This is despite the recent surge in infections in China itself, mostly unreported, and the new variant’s challenges. “I fully believe that China will host the Winter Olympics as scheduled, smoothly and successfully,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at the daily ministry briefing on Tuesday.
The media reported that the Omicron variant was present in the Netherlands earlier than previously thought, even before in South Africa. They found the variant in two test samples from November 19 and 23, with one having no travel history, suggesting that it was already circulating in the Netherlands, the RIVM public health institute said.
Fresh reports suggested they believed the first Omicron cases in the Netherlands came from the cluster of 14 among passengers on two flights from South Africa arriving in Amsterdam on Friday last week. In fact, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany reported cases of the new strain before South Africa notified the WHO on November 24.
“We found two additional cases of Omicron variant which have been sampled on the 19th and 23rd of November,” RIVM infectious diseases chief Aura Timen said, adding “So that points at the presence already of this variant in the Netherlands.”
So far, they have reported nearly 50 new variant cases in 11 European Union nations, but all these patients are asymptomatic or people with mild symptoms, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). “So far, we have reported no severe cases or deaths among these cases,” the ECDC said, based on information from public sources.
The WHO called for countries to keep calm and take “rational” measures in response to the new, fast-spreading Omicron. “We call on all member states to take rational, proportional risk-reduction measures,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said while disfavouring a blanket ban on flights.
