Is Omicron fatal?

As Omicron cases rise to 33 all over the country, experts point out to some facts regarding the symptoms and severity of this variant.

Rakesh Mishra, the former director of CSIR- Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) says that in India, there is an advantage of a very high seropositivity rate,that is around 70 to 80 per cent and around 90 per cent of the people who live in big cities already have antibodies. Even if people do get infected by the new Omicron variant, the symptoms would be quite mild or even asymptomatic. He also says that we could expect the coming variants of the virus to be more mild along with being more infectious. Although, we could expect a fresh wave of the pandemic without the Omicron variant, warned the experts, saying that there could be a surge in the hospitalization rates. This was said with reference to Europe.

Furthermore, experts have also added that there are possibilities of an unexpected bad variant to come up and hence the usage of mask, maintainance of social distancing as well as getting vaccinated would act like weapons against the future waves.

Sources say that all the cases of the new Omicron variant that have been found until now have had mild symptoms such as sore throat, weakness etc. Recently, the capital of India, Delhi had reported a case of a Zimbabwe returned person, who complained only of weakness.

Until now, there have been no reports of an Omicron death and all the cases have very mild symptoms. Some of them have even recovered fully as well as tested negative for COVID-19.While Maharashtra reports the highest number of cases for the new Omicron variant, that is 17, Rajasthan reported 9 cases, 3 from Gujarat and 2 from Karnataka and Delhi each.

Update by Urvi Ramchandani