The recently discovered mutant has now also replaced the delta variant in Switzerland. But not all of the experts’ forecasts are negative.
Tens of thousands of tests are carried out every day in Switzerland. Around 2000 samples are sequenced every week.
On Monday afternoon, the Federal Office of Public Health announced that Omikron is now also dominant in Switzerland. The Ticino canton doctor Giorgio Merlani should not have been surprised. He saw it coming. The dottore had worked through the weekend and found that the dominance of the variant for southern Switzerland is already a reality. In families in particular, there are often several cases as soon as a member is infected, he told SRF. This also applies if all family members have been vaccinated.
Ticino has therefore tightened its quarantine rules: With the exception of people who have already received a booster vaccination, all people who have had contact with corona patients must be in quarantine. This also applies to people who have been vaccinated twice. We now have proof of Omikron’s pronounced ability to infect people who have been vaccinated, says Merlani. After all: the booster should be a game changer. The third vaccination has been shown to increase the number of antibodies that reduce the risk of infection.
Tightening also in Graubünden
Other cantons could soon follow the example of the Ticino authorities and tighten the rules too. In the canton of Graubünden, where the Spengler Cup has already been canceled, according to the government, further measures are to be taken “to ensure health care, protect the population and prevent negative consequences for the economy”. There are apparently plans to tighten the quarantine regulations and make the wearing of masks more compulsory.
How quickly Omikron will spread in Switzerland is still uncertain. The federal Covid Task Force estimated its share in the Zurich metropolitan area to be 25 percent last week. On Monday, the health department of the canton of Zurich announced on request that around half of the cases in the canton are now due to Omikron. You are therefore looking into changing the quarantine rule. The federal task force expects that the variant will dominate the infection rate by the turn of the year at the latest.
It should therefore be possible to track the spread of Omikron as precisely as possible by sequencing the various virus strains. The problem: Such sequencing is time-consuming. Several days pass before a result is available. In Switzerland, a good 2000 samples are broken down every week. This puts Switzerland in fourth place in an international comparison in terms of the number of sequencing per capita.
Sequencing is not extended
But: “The more it is sequenced, the more precise the overview you get”, says the virologist Volker Thiel from the University of Bern to SRF. More sequencing would be very beneficial, but substantial investments would have to be made. Other countries like Denmark did significantly more and therefore had a more precise picture of the nature of the Omicron variant.
According to the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG), an investment in sequencing is currently not planned. The Swiss sequencing program is efficient, it says there. You have a good overview of how quickly the new virus variant is spreading in the country.
Meanwhile, the Zug canton doctor Rudolf Hauri pointed out to the CH-Media newspapers that it was too late to completely prevent a rapid increase in the number of cases. Omikron will not go away even with a lockdown. “We have to learn to live with the virus,” says Hauri. At the same time, he assumes that the main burden of the pandemic will be over in the spring because the basic immunity will be sufficiently high.
Does Omikron lead us into the endemic phase?
This assessment coincides with that of the German virologist Christian Drosten. In a highly acclaimed interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” he said that the Omikron variant would lead society into the endemic phase and would therefore become the normal companion of humanity. Until then, however, it will be “tough again”. Drosten expects that there will be two more waves: one in spring and – after a calm summer – one in autumn.