Omicron variant 'almost certainly' not more severe than Delta, Fauci says

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that while it would take weeks to judge the severity of the new Covid-19 variant Omicron, early indications suggested it was not worse than prior strains, and possibly milder.

Speaking to AFP, President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor broke down the knowns and unknowns about Omicron into three major areas: transmissibility, how well it evades immunity from prior infection and vaccines, and severity of illness.

The new variant is “clearly highly transmissible,” very likely more so than Delta, the current dominant global strain, Fauci said.

Accumulating epidemiological data from around the world also indicates re-infections are higher with Omicron.

Fauci, the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said lab experiments that tested the potency of antibodies from current vaccines against Omicron should come in the “next few days to a week.”

On the question of severity, “it almost certainly is not more severe than Delta,” said Fauci.

“There is some suggestion that it might even be less severe, because when you look at some of the cohorts that are being followed in South Africa, the ratio between the number of infections and the number of hospitalizations seems to be less than with Delta.”

But he added it was important to not over-interpret this data because the populations being followed skewed young, and were less likely to become hospitalized.