16-12-21, 13:22
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#62
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re: OMICRON: Scientists Probe Link Between HIV & Variants
New Clues Emerge to Explain How OMICRON Variant Spreads So Fast
How does Omicron spread so fast? Virus may now be multiplying 70 times quicker in airways
CBC News 16 DEC 2021.
New research from a team in Hong Kong offers a clue to why the Omicron coronavirus variant is spreading so astonishingly fast around the world: it may be multiplying 70 times quicker than earlier strains within our lower airways.
The laboratory-based study, led by researchers from the LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, was shared online as a press release on Wednesday and is currently undergoing peer review for publication.
The researchers found that, just 24 hours after infection, Omicron multiplies 70 times faster than either the Delta variant or the original SARS-CoV-2 virus within tissue samples of human bronchi — the two large tubes that carry air from your windpipe to your lungs.
It's a finding that could explain why Omicron seems to transmit faster between humans than previous variants, and offers a striking contrast to how the variant replicated in the research team's samples of actual lung tissue compared to the bronchi. Within those lung samples, the variant multiplied at a rate more than 10 times slower than the original virus.
It's the lungs — not the bronchi — that are linked to potentially life-threatening COVID-19 complications such as pneumonia and, in severe cases, acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. So if these findings hold up in a real-world setting, the team suspects that slower replication in the lungs might mean reduced severity of disease.
The finding also echoes early evidence from South Africa suggesting Omicron may be linked to a milder course of illness.
But severity of disease is not only a function of where and how quickly a virus replicates in a certain organ, "it is also a function of our immune response," said Dr. Dominik Mertz, an infectious diseases specialist with Hamilton's McMaster University, in an email exchange with CBC News.
People need to be careful in drawing direct conclusions from lab-based studies compared to how infections will actually present in the real world, he wrote.
"The latter must be based on observations in those who have confirmed infections, and we still have to learn more in terms of actual severity in a population like ours, which has first and foremost mRNA-vaccine immunity."
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