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The national director of Epidemiology, Freddy Armijo, assured this Friday that the omicron variant is already circulating in the country. Specifically, he cited information from the laboratory of the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), which points to the presence of the strain in La Paz and El Alto.
“What they tell me about the laboratory of the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés is that they have already detected the presence of omicron in La Paz and El Alto, in the samples that have been sent. No samples from Santa Cruz have been analyzed. Let’s see if we managed to take some samples to be confirmed in the Inlasa laboratory or in the UMSA “, indicated the professional in El Deber Radio.
“All the therapeutic management, the same vaccines, are active in the omicron as in all the variants. (…) That is why the booster dose is being advised. A booster dose raises us in our organism between 200 % and 600% immunity, “he added.
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Given the significant increase in covid cases that has been registered in recent weeks, various voices pointed to the possibility that the omicron variant, reported for the first time in South Africa, had already arrived in the country. However, the Ministry of Health and Sports repeatedly argued that preliminary genomic sequencing studies carried out by the National Institute of Health Laboratories (Inlasa) rule it out.
“(There are) two highly contagious variants, which have altered the evolution of this disease. The incubation time has been reduced to six days, the duration of symptoms that normally lasts four days is six days and they produce enormous viral loads. ( …) With the original strain it was said that, on average, one person could infect three people, but with these strains, between six and seven people can be infected, “warned Armijo
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The World Health Organization (WHO) classified omicron as a “worrying” variant and yesterday rejected that it is a strain classified as “mild”. From a genetic point of view, it has an unprecedented number of mutations: around thirty in the spike protein, the key to entry of the virus into the body.
“Although omicron appears to be less severe compared to delta, especially for vaccinated people, it does not mean that it should be classified as mild,” the WHO director told a news conference.
“Like the previous variants, omicron causes hospitalizations and is killing people,” he insisted, adding that the exponential increase in infections “is overwhelming health systems around the world.”
