There is a chance that humanity will gain immunity after the omicron, but it will not be given to us forever. We know from experience that more vaccines will be needed, because the coronavirus will not leave us - said Prof. Agnieszka Szuster-Ciesielska from the Department of Virology and Immunology at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin.
According to prof. Szuster-Ciesielska "the consequence of the omicron may be a mosaic of various events". "There is already a sister, hidden omicron line called BA.2, observed in Denmark, the Philippines and India. This means that the direction of the pandemic cannot be predicted with certainty," she said in a commentary to UMCS, given as part of the initiative. The eye of an expert ".
A worldwide omicron variant identified four months ago has led to around three million new infections per day.
"With the increased immunity of the population due to vaccination and the tornado of infection that has swept the world, it is possible that in the next chapter of the pandemic, the virus will be overwhelmed but not defeated," she said. She added that "some people say it will be the last wave of this kind, but I am more cautious."
According to the expert, this variant of the virus is groundbreaking. "None of the variants to date had so many mutations, more than 50 in total, 32 of them in the spike protein alone. This is about three times more than in previous versions," she explained. "This shows that this virus is more flexible than most scientists expected, which is worrying," she stressed.
Prof. Szuster-Ciesielska expressed the hope that there is a chance that humanity will gain immunity after the omicron, "but this immunity will not be given forever."
"The huge number of omicron infections is likely to leave behind some kind of enhanced immunity to the coronavirus, but we already know from experience so far that more vaccines will be needed or that more infections will arise because SARS-CoV-2 will no longer be will leave "- she said.
She added that "in the long run, the combination of worldwide vaccination and post-infection immunity should at some point lead to the latest wave of the pandemic."
"Will it be this year? It's a variantoptimistic. For other coronaviruses that cause the common cold, new worrying variants usually appear every three to five years. Let's hope that at some point SARS-CoV-2 will evolve in this direction, although such an adaptation may take many years "- she concluded.