London: Even as Omicron scare grips the world with numbers of new infections almost quadrupling every second day, a UK scientist feels there is a ray of hope in this unprecedented surge.
Hinting that people will gradually start living with the virus as an endemic stage sets in, Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) and a University of Warwick professor said, “It (Omicron) could be the ‘first ray of light’ in that the future might have a less severe coronavirus variant that is similar to the common cold.”
“The thing that might happen in the future is you may see the emergence of a new variant that is less severe, and ultimately, in the long term, what happens is COVID becomes endemic, and you have a less severe version. It’s very similar to the common cold that we’ve lived with for many years,” he was quoted as saying by Times Radio.
“We’re not quite there yet, but possibly Omicron is the first ray of light there that suggests that may happen in the longer term. It is, of course, much more transmissible than Delta was, which is concerning, but much less severe,” the Guardian reported him quoting.
”On the slightly more positive side, so it doesn’t sound all doom and gloom, what we are seeing from hospital admissions is that stays in hospital do appear to be on average shorter, which is good news; symptoms appear to be a little bit milder, so this is what we are seeing consistently with the Omicron variant,” Tildesley said.
