Everyone got tired of coronavirus; The end is near?

Everyone got tired of coronavirus; The end is near?

Omicron seems to be milder, the booster dose of the vaccine works, and there is also the first corona pill, writes Deutsche Welle.

According to a study from England, a new strain of the virus known as omicron is 20 to 25 percent less likely to lead to hospital treatment than a delta mutation. Laboratory experiments show that omicron has a lower ability to infect lung cells.

Although it remains to be seen whether the findings will be confirmed in practice, it seems that omicron will be milder. But, it will spread faster because, due to numerous mutations in the spike protein, it often bypasses the immune response that we acquired through the initial vaccination or by passing the first variants of the virus.

A Scottish study shows that the risk of going to the hospital with omicron is as much as two thirds lower, and that this strain practically does not cause more severe symptoms in people under 60 years of age. That study also showed that the booster vaccine - that is, the third dose - greatly protects against symptoms. A study from the Australian region of New South Wales speaks in favor of that. However, almost everyone is vaccinated there - and omicron sends people to the hospital twice less often than delta.

However, scientists warn that the danger lies in the fact that omicron is much more contagious. Even if the flow of the disease is milder, if a huge number of people become infected in a short period of time - there will be enough of them to fill the hospitals.

Is the end of the pandemic approaching?

Some are already predicting that omicron is slowly but surely bringing an end to the pandemic. Because, that variant is smarter and evolutionarily superior to the delta. This means that it spreads faster, but kills its hosts less often. The omicron should soon take precedence over the delta.

Although the virus will not be eradicated quickly - it may never be - there is a good chance that it will become endemic. That would mean that there is no pandemic, but that a weakened version of the virus will occur here and there locally or seasonally - just like the flu in winter. We would protect from that as well as from the flu - by annual vaccination.

The good news is that vaccine manufacturers claim - and the first studies prove - that the booster dose protects well from omicron. That is what they say in Novax, whose vaccine was recently approved in the EU. Great hopes are placed in this protein vaccine because there are many people who are skeptical about the new mRNA technology, so they avoided Moderna and BioNTtech / Pfizer.

The producers of those two vaccines also announced that the third dose works great against the new strain. The same was announced by AstraZeneca.

The first anti-COVID pill

Pfizer has another big news these days - the US Medicines Agency has issued an emergency approval for their anti-COVID pill called Paxlovid. One inter-analysis of Pfizer shows that the drug reduces the death rate by 89 percent.

Paxlovid actually slows down the replication of the virus. Everyone who is ill takes the pill at home twice a day, for a total of five days, in combination with another preparation. The purpose of this medicine is to avoid a serious course of the disease and prevent possible going to the hospital.

The procedure for approval before the European Medicines Agency is in progress. They say that the tablets could be prescribed to adult patients who do not need additional oxygen, and have an increased risk of severe disease.

Production will not be mass yet, and the medicine is expensive. U.S. authorities thus ordered ten million packages for about five billion dollars. The first assignment consisting of 265.000 pieces will be delivered in January.