Scientists urge to treat COVID like “any other cold”

by time news

The Omicron COVID variant causes “a different disease” from previous waves of coronavirus, says British scientist Sir John Bell. According to him, the disease caused by the new strain “looks less serious”, at the same time, other scientists criticize the absence of new restrictions in England.

Omicron is “not the disease we saw a year ago,” and the high death rate from COVID in the UK is “now history,” says a leading immunologist.

According to The Guardian, Sir John Bell, regional professor of medicine at the University of Oxford and government adviser on natural sciences, says that while hospitalizations with COVID-19 have increased in recent weeks as the Omicron strain spreads in the population, the disease “Seems less serious and many people spend relatively short time in the hospital.” Fewer patients needed oxygen and the average hospital stay was reduced to three days, he said.

Several scholars have criticized the British government’s decision not to impose further restrictions due to the COVID rampant in England until New Years, with some describing it as “the greatest discrepancy between scientific advice and legislation” since the pandemic began. These experts expressed concern that although the Omicron variant looks milder, it is easily transferable, which means that hospital admissions and deaths could rise rapidly if there is no government intervention.

Chris Hopson, chief executive officer of the NHS Providers organization for trusts in England, says it’s still unclear what will happen when infection rates among older people start to rise. “We’ve had a lot of mixed-generation companies over the course of Christmas, so we’re waiting to see if we see a significant increase in the number of patients admitted to hospital with serious Omicron-related illness,” he told BBC Breakfast.

The NHS staff shortage, driven by the need to isolate itself from Omicron, is also putting a strain on the healthcare system, with experts predicting that up to 40% of London staff may be understaffed in the worst-case scenario.

“We are now seeing a significant increase in the number of absent employees, and many of our leaders say they think this is likely to be a bigger problem,” said Hopson.

George Eustis, Britain’s Environment Minister, said the government is keeping COVID hospitalization rates “very closely monitored.” He acknowledged that infection rates with the new Omicron variant are on the rise, but said there is evidence that this has not resulted in the same rate of hospitalizations as previous waves.

Professor John Bell said on BBC Radio 4 Today: “The horrific scenes we saw a year ago, when intensive care units were overcrowded, many people were dying prematurely, is now history, in my opinion, and I think we should to assure that, most likely, it will be so in the future ”.

He said that over the course of several waves of COVID, including waves of Delta and Omicron variants, “the incidence of serious illness and death from this disease has largely remained unchanged since we were all vaccinated.”

Speaking after the government announced on Monday that they would no longer impose restrictions due to COVID this year, Simon Clarke, an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Microbiology at the University of Reading, warned that the latest data was incomplete. He pointed out that the latest case data do not include information on samples taken during the holiday season, and that it will only become clear in the next week or so how the virus spread among the population during the Christmas period. “Although no one wants to live under tighter control, the public must understand that if we are faced with a serious problem of hospitalizations and mass illnesses, it will be worse than if the authorities took action earlier,” he said.

Speaking Tuesday, Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said people with COVID should ultimately be allowed to “lead normal lives” as if they had a cold. “This is a disease that will not go anywhere. Ultimately, we will have to allow people who test positive for COVID to lead normal lives as if they had any other cold, ”he told BBC Breakfast. – COVID is just one virus in the coronavirus family, and other coronaviruses tend to release new variants roughly every year, and this is almost certainly what will happen with COVID. In fact, it will become another cause of the common cold. ”

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