Why Omicron is less severe, plus five talking points from ‘Vrye Weekblad’
Here’s what’s hot in the latest edition of the Afrikaans digital weekly
Image: Sunday Times
Tulio de Oliveira was a student when his family came to SA in 1997. His mother, of Portuguese descent, grew up in Mozambique but left for Brazil when war broke out. With the winds of change sweeping SA she wanted to come back to help rebuild Mozambique.
The young De Oliveira, who had already obtained a degree from Brazil, specialised in bio-information at UKZN’s medical school. He studied HIV and tuberculosis, as well as “all the other major epidemics”: hepatitis B and C, dengue, SARS, SARS-COV-2, yellow fever ... for 20 years he was at the cutting edge of research into viral diseases.
When Covid-19 hit, he was the director at the world-renowned KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP). His team identified the Beta variant and in 2021 De Oliveira and a team of scientists identified the Omicron variant and notified the world thereof.
When I speak to him, he is at the new Centre for Epidemic Response & Innovation at Stellenbosch University’s Tygerberg campus, preparing for a visit from President Cyril Ramaphosa. I joke that scientists are the new rock stars.
“Well, I think it is better to have scientists as rock stars than celebrities who mess up, but on a serious note — not all countries respect scientists. If there isn’t a relationship of trust between government, the public and the scientists, the opposite is true. They are demons.
“The pandemic has shown that countries who trust their scientists have been better at handling the pandemic. We do have that relationship in SA ... and that is why we are at the cutting edge of science.”
De Oliveira points to the fact that “nobody wanted to believe us” when SA announced we were moving into a less deadly phase of the pandemic because previous infections, vaccinations and the readying of hospitals made us handle it better. “That information on the decrease in severity ... has now been duplicated in Britain, Israel, the USA and Europe. SA showed the world that high infection levels do not necessarily result in high deaths if you act fast and continue to vaccinate and keep your hospitals prepared.”
Omicron is not “milder”, De Oliveira explains. “That is the wrong word. It is less severe.”
That is mainly due to the fact that more people have been vaccinated and that there is higher immunity among the population. Hospitals are better prepared and we now know more about the effective clinical treatment of Covid-19.
Even if there is a new variant with the intensity of Delta, it is less likely to cause the same level of deaths.
Read the full article, and more news, analysis and interviews in this Friday’s edition of Vrye Weekblad.
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