Omicron variant, “probably has less severe symptoms”

“Indications from South Africa suggest that the ‘Omicron variant of Covid’ is not more severe, and probably has less severe symptoms, and I say probably with great caution since we still have a lot to study.” Anthony Fauci said this when talking about the new variant of Covid identified last month in South Africa, which preliminary data shows to be transmitted much more easily. “When you look at the relationship between the number of cases and hospitalizations – continued the American immunologist referring to the data coming from South Africa – it is much lower than in the past, and also the duration of hospitalizations is shorter, which suggests strongly that it is a less serious variant “. Fauci then called “good news” that Pfizer and BioNTech provided data on the effectiveness of the three doses of the vaccine against Omicron. However, the immunologist calls for the utmost caution because if Omicron is truly confirmed to be less severe but more contagious “in the end the number of people with severe symptoms could be the same”. “If it is truly more contagious, the sheer amount of people who will be infected may outweigh the positive fact of being less severe,” is his reasoning.