ISLAMABAD: The Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) on Monday confirmed through gene sequencing of a suspected sample Pakistan’s first case of the Omicron, days after it began investigating the person for the first possible case of the latest coronavirus variant.
A spokesperson of the Sindh Department of Health Thursday announced the infection was found in an unvaccinated patient being treated at a private hospital in Karachi.
The official said contact tracing was underway and the patient had travelled abroad, but later authorities said they were uncertain of the person’s travel history.
In a later statement, the National Institute of Health (NIH) said the case was not yet confirmed.
But the AKUH today said the new variant has been detected in the patient through gene-sequencing. In a statement, the facility said the patient was at home and doing well.
So far, no other patients at the hospital have been confirmed to have the variant, it added.
First detected in November, the Omicron variant has now been reported in 57 countries and continues to spread rapidly in South Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
But the latest epidemiological report from WHO said given the Delta variant remains dominant, particularly in Europe and the United States, it is still too early to draw any conclusions about the global impact of Omicron.
Data is still too limited to know with certainty whether Omicron changes the severity of the illness. As of December 6, all 212 confirmed Omicron cases across 18 European Union nations were classed as asymptomatic or mild.
But WHO said: “Even if the severity is equal or potentially even lower than for Delta variant, it is expected that hospitalisations will increase if more people become infected”.
“Further information is needed to fully understand the clinical picture of those infected with the Omicron variant,” the report said.
PFIZER BOOSTER PROTECTS AGAINST OMICRON: STUDY
Last Saturday, researchers in Israel said they found that a three-shot course of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine provided significant protection against the new Omicron variant.
The findings were similar to those presented by BioNTech and Pfizer earlier in the week, which were an early signal that booster shots could be key to protect against infection from the newly identified variant.
The study, carried out by Sheba Medical Center and the Health Ministry’s Central Virology Laboratory, compared the blood of 20 people who had received two vaccine doses 5-6 months earlier to the same number of individuals who had received a booster a month before.
“People who received the second dose 5 or 6 months ago do not have any neutralization ability against the Omicron. While they do have some against the Delta (strain),” Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Sheba, told reporters.
“The good news is that with the booster dose it increases about a hundredfold. There is a significant protection of the booster dose. It is lower than the neutralisation ability against the Delta, about four times lower,” she said.
OMICRON ‘INEVITABLE’ IN PAKISTAN
In November, Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar, who also heads the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), warned the Omicron variant will “inevitably” find its way to Pakistan, adding the nation had “only a few weeks” to contain the latest threat.
“The emergence of new variant makes it even more urgent to vaccinate all eligible citizens 12 years and older,” he said.
“It is my appeal to people, particularly those who’ve gotten one dose to get the second dose because this is one effective thing we have to protect ourselves from the danger of this variant,” the minister added.
The alert followed a WHO communiqué warning its 194 member states the variant is likely to spread internationally, posing a “very high” global risk where Covid-19 surges could have “severe consequences” in some areas.
The UN agency urged them to accelerate vaccination of high-priority groups and to “ensure mitigation plans are in place” to maintain essential health services.
“Omicron has an unprecedented number of spike mutations, some of which are concerning for their potential impact on the trajectory of the pandemic,” the WHO said. “The overall global risk related to the new variant of concern Omicron is assessed as very high.”
