Can Omicron fully dodge vaccine protection? Here's what you should know

Washington, Dec 08: The highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus does not appear to cause more severe disease than previous Covid variants, and is "highly unlikely" to fully dodge vaccine protections, according to a WHO official.

In an exclusive interview to AFP, WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said though more research needed to learn about the new, heavily mutated variant of Covid-19, preliminary data indicated it did not make people sicker than Delta and other strains.

"The preliminary data doesn't indicate that this is more severe. In fact, if anything, the direction is towards less severity," Ryan said, insisting though that more research was needed.

"It's very early days, we have to be very careful how we interpret that signal."

The 56-year-old epidemiologist said that there was no sign that Omicron could fully sidestep protections provided by existing Covid vaccines.

"We have highly effective vaccines that have proved effective against all the variants so far, in terms of severe disease and hospitalisation," he said.

"There's no reason to expect that it wouldn't be so" for Omicron, he said, pointing to early data from South Africa where the variant was first detected that "suggest the vaccine at least is holding up in protection terms".

Vaccine is the weapen

The existing vaccines might prove less effective against Omicron, which counts more than 30 mutations on the spike protein that dots the surface of the coronavirus and allows it to invade cells.

But it was "highly unlikely" it would be able to evade vaccine protections altogether, Ryan said.