Covid-19 : Omicron is four times more widespread than Delta in a Japanese study

Omicron is four times more widespread than Delta in a Japanese study.

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is 4.2 times more prevalent in its early stages than in the Delta, according to a study by a Japanese scientist who advises the country's Ministry of Health, confirming fears of a new strain of infection.

A professor of health and environmental sciences Hiroshi Nishiura at Kyoto University who specializes in mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, studied genetic data in the province of Gauteng in South Africa until November 26.

“The Omicron variant is highly contagious and escapes the immune system that is structured naturally and through vaccines,” Nishiura said in his findings, presented at a meeting of the Ministry of Health’s advisory board on Wednesday.

Concerns are spreading around the world that Omigron could take a bigger blow to the world than Delta, and the World Health Organization has warned that it could trigger an uprising with "severe consequences." But the increase in cases after the appearance of this variant in South Africa has not yet engulfed hospitals, leading to some belief that it will often only cause mild illness. Pfizer Inc. And BioNTech SE said this week they could strengthen defenses against the booster dose strain of their vaccine.

Nishiura's study was reviewed by a colleague and not published in the journal Science. A new analysis was conducted using the same method he used in a July study published in the medical journal Euro Surveillance on the predicted dominance of the delta ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.

Hundreds of researchers worldwide are racing to understand the new variant, which is a very different strain of the five types of anxiety identified by the WHO since the onset of the epidemic.

The country has seen a rapid increase in nearly 20,000 cases a day since Omigran's discovery was first announced two weeks ago in South Africa. According to Bloomberg's Vaccine Tracker, although only 26% of the population has been fully vaccinated, the number of Govt cases in the country has been low in previous weeks.

"The Vaccination rate was under 30% and many might have been impacted normally," Nishiura said. "We want to intently check out future patterns to check whether exactly the same thing occurs in nations where mRNA immunizations are utilized in high rates."