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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaScience

Coronavirus: the Omicron variant is less severe but it’s not ‘nature’s vaccine’

  • Scientists say the highly infectious strain, seen as ‘mild’, should not be underestimated
  • They warn there will be more variants to come as it spreads, replicates and mutates

Reading Time:5 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
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Illustration: Henry Wong
Zhuang Pinghui
Two months after it emerged, the Omicron variant has ripped through many populations and is rapidly becoming the dominant coronavirus strain.

Global case numbers have hit record levels, but proportionally hospitalisations and deaths are lower than for previous surges, indicating that Omicron could be less severe than other strains like Delta.

That has prompted an optimistic view to take hold that this is a highly transmissible but mild variant that could infect billions and provide the immunity needed to end the pandemic. Or as US Senator Rand Paul put it, Omicron is “basically nature’s vaccine”.

But scientists say this notion is dangerous and underestimates the variant’s impact, and that it is still unclear how much immune protection an Omicron infection provides or how long it might last.

Worse, they say that a highly infectious strain running rampant, especially among the unvaccinated, could lead to more new variants emerging – and potentially another variant of concern.

“The ideal vaccine would be a virulent virus that everybody is infected with and becomes immune to,” said Bruce Levin, a biology professor at Emory University in the US.

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