Omicron spreads faster and weakens jabs:

[Apollon]

Omicron wave forces Lufthansa to axe 33,000 flights

German national carrier Lufthansa will cut its winter flight plan by “around 10 per cent” as the spread of the Omicron variant fuels uncertainty about travel, chief executive Carsten Spohr said.

“From the middle of January to February, we see a sharp drop off in bookings”, leading the airline to cancel “33,000 flights or about 10pc” of its flights this winter, Spohr said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS).

“Above all we are missing passengers in our home markets of Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium, because these countries have been hit hardest by the pandemic wave,” Spohr said.

In this file photo taken on June 25, 2020 aircrafts of German airline Lufthansa stand at the airport in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. — AFP

Nope, Lufthansa cancelled a contract with the pilots and wants to give them less favorable contracts. So in return they call in sick. Nothing to do with the virus

 

[ghazi52]

Omicron evades immunity better than Delta, Danish study finds

The Omicron coronavirus variant is better at circumventing vaccinated peoples' immunity than the Delta variant, according to a Danish study published last week, helping explain why Omicron is spreading more rapidly.

Investigating nearly 12,000 Danish households in mid-December, the scientists found that Omicron was 2.7 to 3.7 times more infectious than the Delta variant among vaccinated Danes, reports Reuters.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Statistics Denmark and Statens Serum Institut (SSI), suggests the virus is mainly spreading more rapidly because it is better at evading immunity obtained from vaccines.

“Our findings confirm that the rapid spread of the Omicron [variant] primarily can be ascribed to the immune evasiveness rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility,” the researchers said.

 

[ghazi52]

Australia Covid cases surge, hospitalisations hit pandemic high in NSW

Australia's Covid-19 cases touched a fresh pandemic high on Tuesday amid an Omicron surge in its two most populous states as hospitalisations in New South Wales state, home to Sydney, surpassed the record numbers hit during the Delta outbreak.

People admitted in New South Wales hospitals rose to 1,344, a new pandemic peak, topping the 1,266 reached last September during the Delta wave. Numbers have more than doubled in a week, straining the health system.

A record 47,799 infections have been reported in Australia so far on Tuesday, eclipsing its previous high of 37,212 a day earlier. Four new deaths were registered, Reuters reported.

 

[ghazi52]

Britons warned of hospital crisis as daily Covid-19 cases top 200,000 for first time

Britain faced warnings of an impending hospital crisis due to staff shortages caused by a wave of Omicron infections, as the country's daily Covid-19 caseload breached 200,000 for the first time.

The 24-hour tally, after chalking up multiple records in the run-up to New Year, hit 218,724 and another 48 deaths were reported in the latest government data.

Hospital admissions have not hit anything like the peaks of previous waves of the pandemic and the number of people requiring ventilation has remained flat so far.

But the state-run National Health Service (NHS) is struggling with staff forced to stay at home after testing positive, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised action to plug staffing gaps in the worst-hit areas, AFP reports.

Staff at Park Lane Academy prepare to process Covid lateral flow tests as they undertake a programme to test every pupil on the first day of term, in Halifax, northwest England on January 4. — AFP

 

[jamal18]

Itamar Grotto, the ex-deputy Israeli health minister, suggest letting very Israeli getting Omicron as a form of acquiring natural immunity. It's very mild.

 

[ghazi52]

Kuwait, Qatar Covid-19 daily cases soar past previous highs

Daily coronavirus infection rates reported by Kuwait and Qatar have soared past previous peaks recorded in the summers of 2021 and 2020 respectively, as cases rise across all Gulf states.

Kuwait has reported 2,999 new cases of Covid-19, its fourth day of case numbers exceeding a high of 1,993 seen in July last year. Kuwait had seen below 50 daily cases during the last quarter of 2021.

Qatar on Saturday reported 3,487 new cases — almost 10 per cent of those tested — outpacing a previous high of 2,355 seen in May 2020.

 

[Verve]

Omicron is the best this to happen since the start of the virus. This mutation increases the transmission rate but lowers the risk profile to that of a common flue. It's the virus's undoing.

Let Omicron spread! It will get the world out of the pandemic.

Omicron is definitely Lab created (& so is original) .. no virus in recorded history achieved remotely close to 30 or so mutations within 2 years!

 

[ghazi52]

Mexico hits record in new Covid-19 cases, more than 30,000

Mexico hit a record in confirmed daily Covid-19 cases, according to official data, posting more than 30,000 additional infections as the highly contagious respiratory disease spread in the country, Reuters reports.

The health ministry tallied 30,671 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, after registering more than 20,000 new infections on each of the previous three days. Covid-19 fatalities, however, have not shown a similar spike in recent days, with 202 confirmed deaths on Saturday.

The total number of confirmed cases in Mexico since the pandemic began stands at 4,113,789, with 300,303 confirmed fatalities, the fifth highest official death toll worldwide.

 

[patero]

Cyprus reportedly discovers a Covid variant that combines omicron and delta

A researcher in Cyprus has discovered a strain of the coronavirus that combines the delta and omicron variant, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.

Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, called the strain “deltacron,” because of its omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes, Bloomberg said.

So far, Kostrikis and his team have found 25 cases of the virus, according to the report. It’s still too early to tell whether there are more cases of the strain or what impacts it could have.

“We will see in the future if this strain is more pathological or more contagious or if it will prevail” against the two dominant strains, delta and omicron, Kostrikis said in an interview with Sigma TV Friday. He believes omicron will also overtake deltacron, he added.

The researchers sent their findings this week to GISAID, an international database that tracks viruses, according to Bloomberg.

The deltacron variant comes as omicron continues its rapid spread across the globe, causing a surge in Covid-19 cases. The U.S. is reporting a seven-day average of more than 600,000 new cases daily, according to a CNBC analysis Friday of data from Johns Hopkins University. That’s a 72% increase from the previous week and a pandemic record.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/08/cyprus-reportedly-discovers-a-covid-variant-that-combines-omicron-and-delta