I was convinced that we would have a not normal christmas but better than the last one. Control of the pandemic during the warm months had been good, so much so that contagions had reached a minimum. We knew that in the fall they would rise (due to the return to schools and jobs, low temperatures, etc.), but with a well-vaccinated population, it seemed that the wave could be mastered. Even when things got out of control in half of Europe, I was confident that ‘soft’ measures such as requesting the covid passport for riskier activities they would be enough to slow progress enough to get into the festivities with tolerable case levels.
It has not been so. To the excess relaxation that we dragged from the summer a factor has been added to a certain point expected but always unpredictable as it is a new variant. It took a few weeks to have enough data on the behavior of omicron to know how it would affect us, but now we have no doubt: the situation is bad, with figures that already exceed those of the peak of last January, and it will be much more so if we do not remedy it. The landscape has completely changed in a matter of days.
Ómicron is fast becoming dominant in many countries, and also in our house. It is at least twice as contagious as the delta And, by itself, that already makes case containment much more difficult, in a way similar to what we saw when we went from alpha to delta. But, on top of that, omicron partly escapes the antibodies that vaccines and previous infections have generated. This makes reinfections more frequent, which helps to further increase transmissibility. Luckily, we have seen that a third dose raises the antibodies enough to recover this barrier against infections by omicron, which is why it is so important vaccinate as many people as possible again.
The problem is that we will not be able to do it so quickly as to stop the infections before Christmas, therefore, other measures will have to be implemented. This is where restrictions are indispensable, the other effective tool we have in a pandemic, apart from vaccines. The Scientific Advisory Committee of the Covid-19 we have worked intensively these days on some recommendations, based on the new data available. We have done it as fast as we can in the face of a situation that was changing day by day. We have tried to focus only on what can be applied immediately, leaving aside everything that would conflict with the legal reality of the country (another day we will talk about why after two years we have not been able to make the legislation more flexible to adapt it to the epidemiological reality, as other countries have done). From here, the Government has announced a series of actions to try to contain the problem. For the first time, this process is completely transparent: the original report of the committee is available on the internet, with the names of those who have prepared it, and you can easily see what politicians have considered that it was realistic to apply and prioritize everything we asked for.
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By consensus, in the committee we all agreed that it was necessary to propose avoid encounters these days: maximum four people in public spaces and only the bubble at home. Consequently, I have canceled my planned Christmas dinners and lunches. No matter how angry it makes us, it is better to sacrifice ourselves than to put those we love at risk. Also, if we do not exercise caution, we run the risk of saturating the health system (Primary care is already beginning to do so), with all the problems that this entails for other diseases as well. And although vaccines work very well in preventing serious cases and mortality, even by omicron, if the number of cases is high, the number of victims will be too.
It must be repeated: there is still a lot of pandemic left. Nothing that is happening is unexpected, as we have said many times. There will be more waves and, surely, more variants that will complicate the situation. We know how we have to respond: vaccinating and restricting social contact when necessary. They are measures that work very well, even if the price to pay is high. Therefore, be cautious. And have a happy holiday season.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com