Three-fourths of the United States is immune to an omicron infection and this figure is set to grow as the COVID-19 wave recedes
Photo: iStock COVID-19 cases are still on the rise in Russia and Belarus. They are declining faster than expected in the Caribbean islands and South America while Finland, Sardinia in Italy and Canada’s Manitoba province are reporting an increase in cases after a decline.
All of these have been termed anomalies to the projections made by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent population health research centre at the University of Washington Medicine, United States, in its latest COVID-19 update.
The reasons for Russia and Belarus continuing to report an increase in cases could be lower levels of past infections than expected.
The update doesn’t explain why cases are declining so quickly in the Caribbean islands and South America. For Finland, Sardinia and Canada’s Manitoba province, it presents two possibilities: “A local phenomenon around increased transmission or spatial spread.”
Finland may be witnessing a similar trend as Denmark, where the BA.2 sub-variant of omicron triggered an increase in cases.
China is yet to report an outbreak caused by omicron. This is another anomaly to the IHME projections which expected “the omicron epidemic (to) have taken hold more broadly in the community and we would be seeing widespread transmission” by now.
China has, since Day One, followed a zero COVID-19 policy through strict lockdown measures. “We are therefore pushing out later into March and April what we continue to expect will happen — which is that there will be a widespread omicron wave,” the body noted.
The update also addressed the functional immunity factor which can be acquired either through vaccination, past infection with another variant or an omicron infection.
“In each case, we compute that functional immunity, taking into account the pattern of waning for vaccination and for natural infection, and the cross-variant immunity, or the breakthrough that omicron has against prior variant infection,” it noted.
Putting all this together, IHME estimated that three-fourths of the United States is immune to an omicron infection and this figure is set to grow as the COVID-19 wave recedes.
While we may be protected against an omicron infection in the short term, this is not guaranteed since immunity wanes over time. Even if no new variant emerges, a winter surge in COVID-19 cases caused by omicron is expected. However, a new variant is expected to emerge which, like omicron, may have the ability to escape immunity.
“We don’t expect those new variants, however, to have the same consequence that the Delta variant had last year. Because global levels of immunity are going to be much higher and there is the advent of access, which we hope will eventually be global, to antivirals, which will substantially reduce the infection-fatality rate,” Christopher JL Murray, director, IHME, said in his latest assessment.
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