Omicron is 'not the same disease' as earlier waves of COVID-19, says UK scientist

The Omicron variant is “not the same disease we were seeing a year ago”, said a leading immunologist as the new strain of coronavirus emerges to become the dominant in Europe. According to The Guardian report, Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University and the government’s life sciences adviser, even said that high COVID-19 death rates in the UK are “now history”.

Noting that even though COVID-19 hospitalisations had increased in the recent weeks amid the Omicron spread, Bell said that coronavirus infection “appears to be less severe and many people spend a relatively short time in hospital”. He said that fewer patients were needing high-flow oxygen and the average length of stay was as low as three days. 

Bell’s remarks came after several scientists criticised UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government for not introducing further COVID-19 restrictions in England before New Year’s Eve. John Bell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “The horrific scenes that we saw a year ago of intensive care units being full, lots of people dying prematurely, that is now history, in my view, and I think we should be reassured that that’s likely to continue.”

Noting the multiple waves of COVID-19 including Delta and Omicron, Bell said that “the incidence of severe disease and death from this disease has basically not changed since we all got vaccinated”. He added that empty streets in the country revealed that people had been “pretty responsible” with regard to protecting themselves from the coronavirus. His remarks came after the Johnson-led government on Monday announced that no additional restrictions would be introduced before December 31.

'We are still waiting to see'

But, NHS Providers chief executive, Chris Hopson told BBC Breakfast that it still remained unclear what would happen if COVID-19 infection rates in older people started to increase. He said, “We’ve had a lot of intergenerational mixing over Christmas, so we all are still waiting to see, are we going to see a significant increase in terms of the number of patients coming into the hospital with serious Omicron-related disease.”

It is to note that NHS staff absences due to isolation over Omicron are also causing strain on the health service. Reportedly, experts are predicting up to 40% of NHS staff in London are likely to be off in a “worst-case scenario”. Hopson said, “We’re now seeing a significant increase in the level of staff absences, and quite a few of our chief executives are saying that they think that that’s probably going to be a bigger problem and a bigger challenge for them than necessarily the number of people coming in who need treatment because of COVID-19."

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