South Africa was first to identify the Omicron virus, and to an extent its research is still guiding other nations. A team of journalists at Spiegel International shared information from South African scientists, and confirmed what others suspected. We must prepare for a future that will be different, they warn and for some time to come.
The Coming Months Will Be Rough
Tulio de Oliveira is a bio-informatician, and geneticist leading one of South Africa’s largest sequencing labs in Durban. He told the Spiegel team ‘Maybe Omicron doesn’t make you very sick. A virus that persists for months in a person with immuno suppression cannot be heavily pathogenic. It doesn’t make sense from a viral perspective, either. You would die with your host.’
However, from another point of view it is equally true that several weeks elapse before severe symptoms develop. Symptoms that might require hospitalization and only then come to attention of medical professionals. Many people in South Africa are so poor they literally ‘exist outside the system’. The coming months will be rough, according to Volker Thiel, a virologist at University of Bern.
The World Must Prepare for a Future That Will Be Different
The worst of the pandemic may not be over, says Jeremy Farr who heads the Welcome medical research trust. ‘The Omicron variant now reminds us all, that we remain closer to the start of the pandemic than the end. Humanity needs to prepare for a future that will be different for some time to come.
‘Life as it was before the coronavirus is unlikely to return for years for most people. That’s because the more infections, and thus virus carriers there are, the more likely it is that dangerous new variants will spread. And this doesn’t only apply exclusively to immuno compromised people.’
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