‘Very different symptoms’ – this is what happens with Omicron

The whole world is now concerned about the spread of the B.1.1.529 variant of SarS-CoV2, commonly renamed Omicron. The head of the South African Medical Association, the country where the boom is coming from, Dr Angelique Coetzee, who says she considers it too early to talk about an upcoming health crisis, is trying to impose some order and restore some calm.

After the first European case of the variant identified in Belgium, and the panic that arose after news of 61 South African travelers testing positive at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport (although it is not yet known whether it was a mutation with 1.1.529 or not), Italy recorded Also her first positive patient with a sequence attributed to Omicron, resident in Campania.

According to Dr. Coetzee, giving in to anxiety and talking about a health crisis is premature, but the situation in South Africa is by no means critical. “It may be highly contagious, but so far the cases we’re seeing are very severe light“Already explained.”I’ll probably have a different opinion in a couple of weeks, but that’s what we’re seeing now. Are we too concerned? No. We are worried and see what happensWait, therefore, before talking about a crisis and generating the alarm. A Campania citizen tested positive for the Omicron variant, was vaccinated with two doses and, among other things, has mild symptoms.

In his interview given to telegraphAnd Angelique Coetzee She says that for several days at the private clinic she runs in Pretoria, patients showed up with symptoms not exactly attributable to Covid, which actually led her to consider an alternative. No loss of taste and smell, for example, but a general feeling of fatigue and slight tachycardia. “Their symptoms were very different and mild from the ones I treated earlierThe doctor added that the concern remains, of course, on the elderly or the weak.

“What we have to worry about is that older people who don’t have vaccines get the new variant. And if they are not vaccinated, we will see many more people with severe forms of the disease”, then concluded the doctor, who then indicated that the vaccination case in South Africa (only 6% of those over 65 years of age were vaccinated), is completely different from the European case, where a large part of the population had previously received the serum.