NEW YORK (Dagbladet): The new virus variant is now spreading uncertainty and fear all over the world. Experts do not yet know how dangerous it is, but the EU, the UK, Israel, the US and Australia have already introduced entry restrictions from countries in southern Africa.
At the same time, cases of the new variant have been registered in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel. Danish authorities suspect that at least two people, who recently returned from a trip to South Africa, are infected with omicron.
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The South African doctor and leader of the country’s medical association, Angelique Coetzee, was the first to sound the alarm about a possible new variant. She tells the British newspaper The Telegraph about how patients came to her practice in Pretoria with unusual but mild corona symptoms.
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– So gentle
Her patients were young people with different ethnic backgrounds and experienced intense exhaustion. One of her patients, a six-year-old child, had a very high heart rate. None of the patients experienced a loss of taste or smell.
– Their symptoms were so different and so mild compared to those I had treated before, says the experienced doctor to the newspaper.
Home from South Africa: – No control
November 18, a family of four tested positive for covid. Everyone was completely exhausted, and that was when Coetzee notified South Africa’s vaccine committee.
She says that she has had two dozen patients, who tested positive with symptoms of the new variant. Most were healthy men, who “felt so tired.” Half of the patients were unvaccinated.
– High pulse
– We had a very interesting case with a child of six years who had a fever and a very high pulse. I was wondering if I should put her in. But when I followed up two days later, she was much better, Coetzee tells The Telegraph.
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On Saturday, she briefed other medical organizations in Africa on her experiences. She is particularly concerned about how the new variant may affect older people – with underlying diseases such as diabetes or heart disease.
– What we must be worried about now is that older, unvaccinated people are infected by the new variant. If people are not vaccinated, we will see many people with a serious course of the disease, Coetzee estimates.
Only about 24 per cent of the population in South Africa has been vaccinated, compared with around 70 per cent in Norway.
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Concern variant
WHO describes the new corona variant omicron as a concern variant. Researchers are concerned that the mutated virus will spread faster and that vaccines are not as effective.
Professor and microbiologist at the University of Tromsø, Ørjan Olsvik, believes it is a serious matter that there is currently no control over whether our vaccines work against the new corona variant.
According to the first sequencing, the new variant has up to 32 mutations in the spike gene. That’s a lot. The delta and alpha variant, for example, have only two and three mutations in that gene, Olsvik told Dagbladet.
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