While the Omicron variant of the Corona virus continues to spread faster than previous variants, it is not expected to provide herd immunity in populations.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, public health officials have emphasized the view that if a large proportion of the population is infected or vaccinated in the population, herd immunity will be achieved, thereby stopping the spread of the virus. However, with the emergence of Delta and later the Omicron variant, the re-infection of many people who were previously vaccinated or survived COVID-19, reduced herd immunity expectations.
Some experts were of the opinion that the much faster spread and milder symptoms of Omicron compared to other variants would help to gain the expected herd immunity with less damage.
However, most infectious diseases experts remind that the Omicron variant spreads widely to people who have been vaccinated or who have survived the disease, pointing out that this is an indication that people’s immune systems are still at risk against the virus.
“Pandemic will turn into endemic”
Speaking to the Reuters news agency, epidemiologist from the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Olivier le Polain said: “Reaching a theoretical threshold at which the transmission of the virus will no longer be possible is not a very realistic possibility, given what we have seen so far in this pandemic.”
On the other hand, although expectations for herd immunity are beginning to fade, experts say that those who have been vaccinated and those who have been infected before are less at risk if they contract Omicron or other variants.
The COVID-19 vaccines that have been approved and started to be used around the world so far are vaccines designed not to catch the virus, but to prevent severe disease and death in general.
In clinical vaccine trials conducted at the beginning of the pandemic, it was suggested that COVID-19 vaccines with an effectiveness rate of more than 90 percent could prevent the spread of the virus thanks to widespread vaccination programs, as in the measles vaccine.
However, the decrease in the immunity rate obtained thanks to the vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the pandemic, and the frequent mutations of the virus and the emergence of new variants prevent the vaccines from being sufficient to eliminate the virus.
Some experts predict that everyone or a very large part of the population will catch the Corona virus over time.
It is among the scenarios expected to be encountered in the future that the pandemic will turn into an endemic over time, that is, it will remain dominant in certain regions and create epidemic waves from time to time. WHO expert Dr. Regarding this, Polain said, “We will get to that point, but we are not there right now.”
Preparation for new variants
While restrictions are reinstated in some countries and regions, especially in Europe, due to the wave of new cases with the Omicron variant, precautionary plans against possible new variants that may arise in the future are also on the agenda in the USA, where Omicron is dominant.
White House Secretary General Ron Klain, in an interview with MSNBC news channel, stated that President Joe Biden’s administration has started preparations for new variants, “We are ready. We are increasing test production. We are also increasing the production of masks,” he said.
“Sputnik V is more effective than Pfizer against Omicron”
According to the first findings obtained in a small-scale clinical trial conducted by Italian and Russian researchers, the antibodies produced by the immune system against Omicron in those who receive the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine do not decrease as much as observed in those with the Pfizer vaccine.
The experiment, conducted by experts from Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute and Italy’s Spallanzani Institute, studied people who received a second dose of either vaccine 3 to 6 months ago. Preliminary research indicates that those who have received two doses of the Sputnik V vaccine have greater resistance to the Omicron variant.
As a result of the study conducted on 51 people, the rate of antibodies produced against Omicron in the blood of those who had the Sputnik V vaccine was 74.2 percent, while this rate was determined as 56.9 percent in those who had the vaccine developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech. The results of the research are in the scientific evaluation stage.