I wanted to share some of the very optimistic news on Omicron that our team of scientists in Open Orphan’s London virology lab are conveying to me. They are now confident that with the onset of Omicron that Covid 19 is following the historic experience of pandemics, that they end with the arrival of a less dangerous but much more contagious variant. 
It’s too early to pop the champagne quite yet and far, far, too early to abandon sensible day-to-day precautions, but Omicron may prove to be such a variant. If so then this is the start of the end of the pandemic.
The bad news is that many more people will catch Omicron. The good news is that for the vast majority symptoms may be nothing more serious than the common cold.
We won’t know for sure for another couple of weeks but by New Year’s Eve a lot should be clearer. If, as looks likely at this point, Omicron is a lot less deadly that the earlier Covid variants the prospects for 2022 will be dramatically improved.
Right now, the Government here and governments around the world will need to keep up the pace on getting everyone vaccinated and continue booster programmes as the key to avoiding the risk of getting seriously sick. As the proportion of the population that have received a booster increases, we will not see any more further hard lockdowns and by spring time the world will simply be getting used to living with a milder form of Covid-19, something on a par with the common cold or seasonal flu.
How can I be optimistic? Scientists already know a lot about Coronavirus and are rapidly learning more.
Prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, there were only six Coronaviruses that infected humans. In the average year, up to a quarter of the human race are infected by a Coronavirus called ‘OC43’ or ‘229E’ and for healthy normal people, they causes nothing more serious than a runny nose and a mild cough.
Globally, governments and the pharmaceutical industry have ploughed billions of euros into developing Covid-19 vaccines which are proving very effective in ensuring very few vaccinated people get seriously ill. Booster programmes mean people are clearly getting a high degree of protection against the Omicron variant.
Let’s not forget that this summer things were starting to regain a level of normality thanks to the successful vaccine roll out with far fewer people getting seriously ill and with Covid patients no longer overrunning ICU capacity.
During the past summer, crowds returned to sporting events, hospitality reopened and tourism took off again. Unfortunately, we have had a return to restrictions with the emergence of Omicron, however I am confident that we are now finally in the end phase of the pandemic because I am a firm believer the current wave is going to be much milder than any prior variant of Covid-19.
Replication of a virus nearly always means the loss of pathogenic potency – the virus becomes less deadly as it spreads faster and wider, almost like it is getting diluted down with each variation. Over centuries some viruses have been more predictable than others.
Happily, Coronaviruses have historically been very predictable in how they evolve. True to form Covid-19 is behaving almost exactly as expected, becoming less deadly as it becomes more contagious.
Pandemics are rare events, the last proper one being 100 years ago, the Spanish flu.
Just as happened back then, the current pandemic has been a catalyst for scientific innovation.
Scientists have been working on mRNA technology for decades and it has been regarded in the scientific community as a potential ‘holy grail’ for a vast array of disease prevention. Thanks to the accelerated pace of innovation during the pandemic this mRNA technology has finally been proven successful and has been accepted by regulators such as the FDA and EMA. New mRNA vaccines can now be rolled out in mass production in less than 100 days and they don’t just help against Covid-19, but they are a weapon against future pandemics and hold promise as a cure for some cancers.
Our business Open Orphan plc runs lots of vaccine trials and as such we can get information feeding back from the front line of healthcare across Europe. In recent months that feedback is that a majority of patients in intensive care units (ICU) in Europe are not vaccinated. For those patients in ICUs who have been vaccinated, the vast majority also had other serious underlying health conditions or are immuno-compromised, which reduce the efficacy of the vaccines.
Covid-19 remains a threat to health and life. For the next month or two, unfortunately, we should follow government guidelines and maintain social distancing measures.
Christmas will be a little quieter than normal but things are already looking a lot more normal than the dark days of 2020. In the year ahead, for the great majority of us the fear of getting seriously ill should be banished from all our minds if we are vaccinated.
As the threat recedes we can start to think about positive changes that have resulted from the disruption to old routines and patterns.
The end of the Spanish Flu heralded a changed world of improved urban housing and public hygiene, not least because the wealthy had learned that their welfare could not be divorced from those around them.
The end of Covid is a chance to think about long term improvements we want to make as a society. We’re now experiencing every day the benefits of a massive, collective, drive to save lives through our health system.
A shift in attitudes and better technology means many people can now easily work remotely and as such Ireland’s towns and country villages have a new and sudden relevance.
Across the world areas that have suffered decades of depopulation are blossoming back to life as remote working takes off.
My bet is that in years to come historians will write about this period and how we learned that for many of us, we could live and work outside of the big cities and towns.
Cathal Friel is Chairman and CEO Open Orphan Plc, a stock market listed leader in the testing of vaccines, antivirals and respiratory products using human challenge clinical trials.
In October 2020, it partnered with the UK Government to deliver the world’s first Covid-19 challenge study, whereby 40 volunteers were deliberately infected with Covid-19.
http://www.independent.ie/
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