Omicron 10 times better at punching through Covid vaccines and immunity as Delta

Omicron is widely known to be more contagious than previous Covid strains but a new graph shows by just how much and explains why some scientists believe the worst of the virus may not yet be over.

In a highly secure clean room at the University of NSW’s Kirby Institute, experts studied the strain at the beginning of Australia’s Omicron wave in mid-December and found out just how adept the variant is at evading vaccines.

While the Delta variant was 60 per cent better at evading antibodies than the original virus found in Wuhan – even in the bodies of the double-vaxxed, Omicron was 16.5 times better at evading immunity – 10 times more than Delta.

That explains why Omicron surged so quickly when it arrived in Australia – going from 110,000 active cases nationwide on Dec. 30 to 835,000 on Jan. 17.

It has since eased significantly, with numbers dropping around 80 per cent since.

But while the Omicron wave is subsiding across the globe, scientists believe new variants may continue to emerge for years – particularly in winter.

Already in Europe and parts of Asia, a new subvariant of Omicron known as BA.2 is rapidly spreading with indications it could be even more contagious than its predecessor, the Omicron BA.1 strain.

Danish health officials estimate that BA.2 may be 1.5 times more transmissible than BA.1 based on preliminary data, but it likely does not cause more severe disease.

The UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on February 10 outlined four ways the end of the Covid pandemic could play out.

The best case scenario, which is most likely, involved new variants no worse than what have already been seen and global immunity remaining high.

But a worse case scenario involves ‘unpredictable’ new variants which could evade current immunity and move too fast for updated vaccines to keep up.

There is a strong theory in scientific community that Covid will evolve to become less dangerous.

The ‘law of declining virulence’ established by Dr Theobald Smith suggested viruses become less severe to ensure their own survival. 

This is because, in simple terms, the milder strains are more likely to be spread because people take fewer precautions to avoid them.

Experts warn the new variants will appear for years especially in winter months (pictured: health workers conduct a PCR test) 

However, experts warn a continued easing in the potency of Covid should not be taken for granted. 

‘There’s this assumption that something more transmissible becomes less virulent. I don’t think that’s the position we should take,’ Francois Balloux, a computational biologist at University College London, told scientific journal Nature.

Australian National University professor Peter Collignon agreed, saying a best case scenario was most likely but ‘all of us have got to be honest and say we don’t really know’.

There is work being done by several laboratories around the world on a pan-sarbecovirus vaccine – a single vaccine to protect against any current or emerging Covid variants as well as any similar viruses.

‘Additional variants may arise, and this occurs more quickly than variant-specific vaccines can be developed and deployed.’ Dr Phil Krause, the chair of the WHO Covid Vaccines Research Expert Group, said on January 28.

‘Structural similarity between sarbecoviruses should enable development of a pansarbecovirus vaccine.

‘Many approaches are highly promising and feasible.’

Several laboratories around the globe are working on a single vaccine which could replace the need for variant specific boosters (pictured: a Canberra PCR testing clinic)