At the end of November, 117 people meet for a Christmas party in the Louise Restaurant on the port of Norway’s capital. Although 96 percent of them are fully vaccinated, they have to do a rapid test or PCR test beforehand to be sure – all of them are negative.
Nevertheless, at the end of the celebration at least 66 of them were infected with the Omikron variant, with 15 other infected people the variant is still unclear at this point in time. The reason for the outbreak: A party guest had returned from South Africa two days earlier and had been infected with the Omikron variant. He didn’t know anything about it himself.
Young, vaccinated and infected
As the online portal “Focus” reports, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has now taken a closer look at the outbreak in a study. Accordingly, the guests were last vaccinated 79 days ago, and nobody was boosted. The guests affected were on average 38 years old. The infections show that Omikron had an overall infestation rate of 74 percent at the Oslo Christmas party.
The conclusion of the scientists: “The preliminary results of our outbreak investigation indicate that the Omikron variant is highly transmissible among fully vaccinated young and middle-aged adults.”
Almost all of them had symptoms
Although most of the guests were fully vaccinated, over 90 percent developed symptoms after being infected. The most common was a cough, followed by a stuffy nose, fatigue, sore throat, headache, and fever. Around half of those affected stated that they had moderate to rather severe symptoms.
“Doesn’t look like a milder disease to me. Nobody boosted ”, commented the German virologist Christian Drosten (49) on the case in a tweet. After all: none of the infected has had to go to hospital so far (as of December 13).
People infected who weren’t at the party
During their investigation, the scientists made another discovery: In addition to the party guests, almost 70 other restaurant guests were infected. The researchers assume that they met the guests of the Christmas party at the bar and on the dance floor. The omicron variant was also detected in the majority of them.
According to the researchers, the high infection rate can be explained by an environment with a high risk of transmission. Because those affected had stayed for several hours in the interior of the restaurant. There was dancing and drinking. Because of the music, they should also have spoken louder. (bra)
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