New Coronavirus News from 28 Jan 2022

Israel among 'populist' nations which mishandled pandemic in 2020 [The Jerusalem Post, 28 Jan 2022]

By IAIN ROGERS

Those countries were less likely to implement “unpopular policies” to check the spread of the pandemic such as contact restrictions.

Israel, the US, Britain, Brazil and other nations with “populist” governments mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and caused unnecessary deaths with relatively lenient policies, according to an academic research paper.

Excess mortality — the number of deaths beyond those that could be expected without the pandemic — was more than twice as high on average in populist-governed countries, Michael Bayerlein, a researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and one of the authors of the paper, said Thursday.

The main reason for the difference was that “citizen mobility” — measured using Google data on the number of people in places like grocery stores or parks — was higher in populist countries at similar infection rates, the study showed. Excess mortality was 18% in populist-led countries and 8% in non-populist nations.

For the purposes of the study, 11 governments were classified as “populist.” As well as those in the US, Britain and Brazil, the list included Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Mexico, Israel and Turkey.

Those countries were less likely to implement “unpopular policies” to check the spread of the pandemic such as contact restrictions, according to the authors.

They also determined that the communication strategy of populist administrations typically downplayed the severity of the pandemic and discredited scientific findings. Citizens were therefore less inclined to take the virus seriously and restrict their movements on their own initiative.

The US has suffered the most deaths from COVID-19, with almost 880,000, followed by Brazil with nearly 625,000, according to the Bloomberg Virus Tracker. India has recorded more than 490,000 and the U.K. over 150,000.

As well as Bayerlein of the Kiel Institute, the authors included researchers at universities in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Britain.

“Stealth” Omicron accounts for 4.5% of imported COVID-19 cases in S. Korea [The Hankyoreh, 28 Jan 2022]

By Hwang Chun-hwa

The KDCA chief said that the subvariant is detectable with Korean PCR tests

As the number of COVID-19 cases involving the Omicron variant rises rapidly in South Korea, 4.5% of confirmed patients arriving from overseas have been identified as having the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron.

BA.2 has been referred to as the “stealth” version of Omicron due to genetic mutations that make it difficult to distinguish from other variants via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.

“Around 4.5% of infected people arriving from overseas are confirmed to have the ‘stealth’ subvariant of Omicron. The subvariant can be identified in the PCR reagents we currently use to analyze viral variants,” said Jeong Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), during a press briefing Thursday.

When the “stealth” subvariant was first discovered in South Africa and other countries in December last year, concerns were raised that PCR testing would struggle to distinguish it from other variants, which could make it hard to monitor. But Jeong said the subvariant can be detected with the reagents Korea uses in its PCR tests.

The KDCA commissioner noted that Korea doesn’t detect variants using the genetic component responsible for the subvariant’s so-called stealth, and said that it “won’t have any impact on detection.”

“This subvariant of Omicron hasn’t been identified in locally transmitted cases of COVID-19,” Jeong added.

A team of researchers in Japan found that this Omicron subvariant is 18% more transmissible than the standard Omicron variant.

The UK Health and Safety Executive recently designated the subvariant as a topic for research, noting that transmission of the subvariant is on the rise in several countries.

Stealth Omicron Variant BA.2 1.5 Times More Contagious Than Original but Vaccines Still Work [Newsweek, 28 Jan 2022]

BY ED BROWNE

The Omicron BA.2 COVID-19 sub-type may be 1.5 times more contagious than the previous BA.1 type, according to new data from Denmark—but booster shots work against it.

The country has been one of the worst-affected in Europe by the BA.2 sub-type which has been responsible for an increasing proportion of COVID-19 cases in a number of nations recently.

As of January 26, BA.1 was still the most common Omicron sub-variant worldwide, accounting for 98 percent of cases at that time, according to Denmark's Statens Serum Institut (SSI) infectious diseases organization.

But in Denmark itself, BA.2 developed quickly and has become the country's dominant COVID type.

In a press release on Wednesday, the SSI said BA.2 appeared to be one and a half times more contagious than BA.1, based on preliminary calculations.

Dr. Tyra Grove Krause, an infection epidemiology expert at the organization, stated: "Of course, we follow the development closely, and if BA.2 is more contagious, it may mean that the wave of infections will be higher and will extend further into February compared to the previous projections."

BA.2 had been reported from at least 54 countries worldwide, including the U.S. as of January 27, according to Outbreak.Info which uses data from the virus genetic database GISAID.

While experts shed more light on how infectious BA.2 might be, data has also suggested that vaccines are still effective against it.

On Thursday the U.K.'s Health Security Agency (HSA) reported that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease with BA.2 compared to BA.1 had recently been analyzed. The results showed that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease was similar for BA.1 and BA.2.

The early data showed that, two weeks after a booster dose, vaccine effectiveness was around 63 percent for BA.1 and 70 percent for BA.2. Effectiveness was significantly lower—between 9 and 13 percent—in those who had only had two doses after 25 weeks. The data refers to all vaccine brands combined.

That same day Dr Mary Ramsay, Head of Immunisation at HSA, said in a press release: "The evidence is clear—the vaccine helps to protect us all against the effects of COVID-19 and the booster is offering high levels of protection from hospitalization and death in the most vulnerable members of our society."

The U.K. vaccines minister Maggie Throup called boosters "absolutely crucial" for increasing immunity against Omicron.

The BA.2 variant has sometimes been referred to as the "stealth" variant of Omicron due to a change in the way it is detected compared to BA.1. However, the variant will still result in a positive COVID-19 test.