Health News at Your Fingertips

Here’s a recap of Sunday’s Omicron developments as the new strain continues to panic world leaders.

• Authorities in the Netherlands detected at least 13 cases of the Omicron variant from recent flights into Amsterdam from South Africa.
• Botswana, which borders South Africa, said it has recorded a total 19 Omicron cases.
• The UK said it has detected three total Omicron infections in Nottingham, Essex and the London borough of Westminster, with targeted PCR testing being stepped up.
• The World Health Organisation urged countries not to impose blanket travel restrictions on southern African countires, amid fears of the economic toll and that the science behind the decisions is not yet certain without further studies.
• South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphos said the new variant is a “wake-up call” for global vaccine inequality and criticised travel bans for their economic fallout.
• European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned of global “race against time” against Omicron, urging people to practice social distancing and get vaccinated so scientists have time to understand the new variant’s transmissibility and severity.
• The health ministers of the G7 will hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the Omicron variant.
• The 194 member states of the World Health Organization agreed to launch pandemic treaty negotiations as the world prepares to learn the lessons of Covid for the next pandemic.
• The US chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci warned of a potential “fifth wave” of Covid in America, as the US vaccination rate slows, cases rise and the Omicron variant looms on the horizon.
• The UK reported 37,681 new Covid cases and 51 deaths, with the government vaccine watchdog suggesting the vaccine booster drive could be accelerated as soon as Monday to suppress cases.
• Secondary school pupils and teachers in England will wear once again face coverings in communal areas.
• Israel suspended all flights into the country on Sunday at 10pm GMT after detecting its first Omicron infection on Friday, just four weeks after it fully opened its skies to vaccinated travellers.
• Morocco said it will stop all incoming flights for two weeks starting Monday to prevent spread of the new strain.

That’s all from me, Jem Bartholomew, here in London as Helen Livingstone in Australia takes over the blog.

Interesting comment piece here from Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, on the three pieces of data needed to reveal Omicron’s danger to the UK.

1. Infectiousness – can it overtake the Delta variant to gain a foothold as the dominant strain?
2. Disease severity – what’s the impact on hospitalisations and deaths, what does this mean for hospital capacity and therefore lockdowns?
3. Vaccine disruption – are existing vaccines less effective against this strain, and do they need to be tweaked? (BioNTech said it could change its Covid vaccine in 100 days if needed.)

So what does this mean for each of us? Right now, we need to continue to do all the things we should already be doing to get through the harsh winter months: getting vaccinated, and boosted, to protect ourselves; using the free home-testing kits to ensure we’re not infecting others, whether in friends’ homes or in pubs and restaurants; wearing masks in crowded places such as public transport and shops; and being attentive to how many close contacts we have.

Botswana has detected a total 19 cases of the new Covid variant, Omicron, the health minister said on Sunday.

“As of today we have recorded a total of 19 cases of the variant,” health minister Edwin Dikoloti said.

Botswana shares a 1,223-mile border with South Africa, where Omicron was first sequenced.

Botswana said on Friday the first cases of Omicron came from four foreign nationals who arrived on 7 November on a diplomatic mission.

“We are concerned that there seem to have been attempts to stigmatise the country where it was detected,” Dikoloti added, criticising derogatory reports of a so-called “Botswana variant”.

Canada has confirmed two cases of the Omicron variant in federal capital Ottawa, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports.

Both cases were recent arrivals from Nigeria and are Canada’s first from the new variant.

Canada banned travellers who had visited southern Africa countries in the past two weeks in a ban which came into effect on Friday.

“Today, the province of Ontario has confirmed two cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in Ottawa, both of which were reported in individuals with recent travel from Nigeria. Ottawa Public Health is conducting case and contact management and the patients are in isolation,” the Ontario government said.

The health minister, Christine Elliott, and chief medical officer, Kieran Moore, said in a statement: “The best defence against the Omicron variant is stopping it at our border. In addition to the measures recently announced, we continue to urge the federal government to take the necessary steps to mandate point-of-arrival testing for all travellers irrespective of where they’re coming from to further protect against the spread of this new variant.”

Morocco will suspend all incoming flights for two weeks over the new Omicron variant starting Monday, state media reported.

Israel shut its borders to all travellers on Sunday at 10pm GMT, in moves which are more severe but less discriminatory than other flight bans imposed by other countries.

The European Central Bank president, Christine Lagarde, said the euro zone is better equipped to face the economic impact of a new wave of Covid infections or the Omicron variant.

“There is an obvious concern about the economic recovery [of the euro zone] in 2022, but I believe we have learnt a lot. We now know our enemy and what measures to take. We are all better equipped to respond to a risk of a fifth wave or the Omicron variant”, Lagarde told Italian broadcaster RAI on Sunday.

Member states of the World Health Organization agreed to launch pandemic treaty negotiations on Sunday, as the world prepares to learn the lessons of Covid for the next pandemic.

From Monday to Wednesday the World Health Assembly – WHO’s decision-making body of 194 member states – meets in Geneva, Switzerland.

The negotiations will discuss how to establish an intergovernmental body to boost international co-operation in preparing, preventing and responding to the next pandemic. The goal is to reduce the devastating economic consequences and catastrophic loss of life witnessed during the Covid pandemic.

A stumbling block to agreement had been the US’s refusal of language that would have been any such treaty legally binding, but the US has partly relented for now, helping produce an agreement.

“WHO member states today informally agreed to start negotiations on a pandemic treaty. Now the resolution needs to be formally adopted tomorrow by world leaders,” said the European Union’s diplomatic mission in Geneva.

It added: “The events of the last weeks demonstrate more than ever the need for global solidarity and leadership. We look forward to world leaders demonstrating their joint commitment tomorrow. The momentum is there – the planet must be better prepared.”

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said the new Omicron Covid strain is a “wake-up call” for global vaccine inequality.

Roughly 10% of people in Africa have been inoculated with at least one vaccine shot, the New York Times estimates, compared with 62% of people in Europe and 64% in North America.

Ramaphosa said he will not be imposing further restrictions at this time, saying this phase of the pandemic differs due to the availability of vaccines. Just under one-quarter of people in South Africa are double-vaccinated.

Ramaphosa opposes travel bans announced on southern African countries in recent days, amid fears of the economic toll. The World Health Organization echoed Ramaphosa’s concern on Sunday and called for borders to remain open, citing uncertainty over the transmissibility, severity and vaccine disruption from Omicron.

The UK’s Covid booster vaccine rollout could be significantly expanded as early as Monday in efforts to prevent spread of the Omicron strain.

The government’s vaccines watchdog, which held an emergency meeting over the weekend, could advise the use of boosters for younger people, as well as a cut in the current six-month wait between second and booster doses, The Guardian understands.

The UK has administered 46.3 million second vaccine doses, 69% of the total population, but only 17.6 million booster or third doses, 26.2% of the total population.

Secondary school pupils will also be told to wear masks in communal areas, and from Tuesday measures will come into effect mandating face coverings in shops and on public transport, as ministers step up suppression tactics.

My colleagues Peter Walker and Linda Geddes have the full story here.

Plans to identify positive Omicron infections have been activated in Northern Ireland, UK.

“Using passenger locator data, the Public Health Agency is identifying and contacting individuals who have recently arrived in Northern Ireland from red list countries,” Stormont health minister Robin Swann said on Sunday.

He added: “They and their household members will be asked to self-isolate and undertake PCR tests. If any positive cases are detected, the sample will then undergo whole genome sequencing to determine the variant type.”

No Omicron cases are confirmed in Northern Ireland but England has recorded three infections so far.

Swann urged the public to follow the steps to beat back infections, such as:

• Getting vaccinated, including booster jabs
• Wearing face coverings
• Ventilating rooms or meeting outdoors
• Working from home if possible
• Washing hands regularly.

Scientists are already scrambling to understand the new Omicron variant. They are assessing its transmissibility, whether its mutations spell greater disease severity and how it impacts existing vaccines.

The strain was identified as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization on 26 November – due to mutations to the virus’s spike protein that appear to boost its transmissibility – which is a more serious designation than “variant of interest”.

Researchers at Bambino Gesu hospital in Rome, Italy, on Sunday released a three-dimensional image of the variant. The researchers said in a statement:

We can clearly see that the Omicron variant presents many more mutations than the Delta variant, concentrated above all in one area of the protein that interacts with human cells.

This does not automatically mean that these variations are more dangerous, just that the virus has further adapted to the human species by generating another variant.

Other studies will tell us if this adaptation is neutral, less dangerous or more dangerous.

Rwanda suspended direct flights to and from southern Africa on Sunday to prevent the new Omicron Covid strain’s spread, the prime minister’s office said.

It comes after the landlocked east African country reimposed a 24-hour quarantine on Friday, coming into effect Sunday, for all arriving travellers.

Prime minister Édouard Ngirente’s office also said it would now be compulsory to be fully vaccinated and tested at events such as conferences and concerts.

But the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, urged countries on Sunday to avoid travel bans, as the transmissibility and severity of the new variant are still being investigated and such a policy “attacks global solidarity”. (See my earlier post for more details.)

The Czech president Miloš Zeman carried out the prime minister’s inauguration ceremony from a glass perspex cubicle on Sunday, after becoming the latest in a long tally of world leaders to test positive for Covid.

Zeman sat in a wheelchair and wore a face covering while appointing Petr Fiala, of the centre-right Civic Democratic party, as prime minister at the Lány Chateau near Prague. He was accompanied by a medic in full protective gear.

Leaders such as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, former US president Donald Trump, Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, who became critically ill with the disease, have all tested positive for the virus.

Fiala ousted incumbent Andrej Babiš, whose offshore financial arrangements were spotlighted by The Guardian’s Pandora Papers investigation published last month.

The new Czech government’s agenda includes suppressing a new wave of Covid infections threatening to overwhelm hospitals, with Czech positive tests surging to 27,793 on Friday from 5,842 four weeks before on 29 October.

The Czech government declared a 30-day state of emergency on Friday, introducing new restrictions such as banning Christmas markets and imposing a 10pm curfew on restaraunts, bars and nightclubs.