US doctors in a fix over treatment with no way to distinguish Omicron cases from Delta

Amid soaring cases of the Coronavirus in the United States, the hospital staff are now confused about the treatment of the patients. According to a report by New York Times, the country is now fueled by the abrupt increase of the COVID-19 cases, however, this creates confusion among doctors regarding the treatment of the infectious virus. This is because the country is also facing the worst crisis due to the emergence of the new COVID variant, Omicron. As the testing of the new Variant requires "genome sequencing", the results take more than a week to confirm whether the patient is infected with the delta variant or the Omicron. Now, this creates confusion for the medical team as to whether they would apply the treatment according to the delta variant or the new COVID strain. 

According to an NYT report, the patient infected with the delta variant requires the drugs made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, on the other hand, the person infected with the Omicron variant requires antibody drugs manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology. While speaking to NYT, a US-based doctor, who has been actively involved in the treatment of the Coronavirus since it first emerged in the country, said the doctor fraternity is confused as the Omicron test results comes around a week after the test. "If the condition of a patient deteriorates, we got confused as to whether to give drugs made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly or drugs manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology," said the doctor.

Doctors treat patients according to the area of residence

Further, he said there are also confusions among the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as in the early month of December, the national public health agency declared around 73% of all COVID-19 cases in the country were arising out of the Omicron variant. Subsequently, it reduced the supply of the drugs which were used in the treatment of the delta variant. "However, when a new report showed only 53% of the total COVID cases were due to the new COVID variant, the CDC increased the quota of the antiviral drug used in the treatment of the older variants," NYT quoted the doctor as saying. According to him, the new research said the delta variant is still prevalent in some parts of the country and that is the main reason the doctor is now using predict the geographical region to predict the variant of the patient.

Image: Representative/PTI