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  • Covid "Ómicron is less aggressive, in two or three months we will live with her"

Two years after its appearance, we are in the middle of the sixth wave of

Covid-19

. What is surprising is, above all, its

ability to acquire and correct mutations that end up giving life to increasingly transmissible variants

. This was the case with the Alpha variant and then the Delta, and

Omicron

is even more contagious. In addition, both Delta and, to a greater extent, Ómicron, have been shown to be able to evade the immune response and therefore

reduce, even partially, the effectiveness of vaccines

, for which it has been necessary to resort to the administration of booster doses to increase protection against severe forms of the disease.

The greater contagion capacity and the short period of time between the appearance of one case and the next give

Ómicron a selective advantage over other variants of the coronavirus

as well as the ability to generate a large number of infections in a few days.

It follows that, even if the intrinsic virulence of Ómicron is reduced (the risk of hospitalization appears to be about a third that of Delta), the risk of congestion of hospitals as of any problem related to the continuity of some essential services is high .

Ómicron, according to political scientist

Yascha Mounk

, marks the beginning of the "social" end of the pandemic.

But it is too early to say whether it may also be a prelude to the "biological" end of the crisis.

To explain what is happening,

reference is usually made to the "Spanish flu"

, which, however, was caused by a flu virus, very different from coronaviruses, and which manifested itself with a succession of epidemic waves each with different characteristics. During

the first wave, which began in March 1918, at the time of the "Great War," classical flu symptoms predominated

and the clinical impact was not severe.

The second wave, which began

in the late summer of 1918, was devastating

, especially between October and December, due to high rates of pneumonia, which often also affect young people and cause high mortality. The third wave, which began between December and January, lasted until March-April 1919, but was less virulent. Unfortunately, unlike what happens today,

the lack of technology did not allow to follow the evolution of the virus from a molecular point of view and therefore identify mutations that could explain the differences

in what was defined, with an imaginative term, as an epidemic "genius."

If history were to repeat itself over and over again in the same way, being mindful of the current threat to public health presented by Ómicron, we would still

look to the future with cautious optimism

.

Relief of symptoms and immunity of the population caused by infections and / or vaccines bodes well, as

any new variant is likely to encounter a more resistant population

.

It's also hard to think of a new variant that can spread faster and more efficiently than Omicron.

However,

a margin of uncertainty remains, because viruses are known to be rare

and the opportunities offered by a globalized world largely poor in resources and vaccines are many.

* Giovanni Rezza is an epidemiologist and director of health prevention at the Italian Ministry of Health

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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