Opinion Masks, boosters will help reduce impact of new COVID variant
We haven’t been able to enjoy much of a reprieve following the rise and fall of Omicron infections with the BA.2 subvariant already on the rise, plus the La Nina weather forcing more of us indoors out of the rain or humidity where transmission risk is higher.
As epidemiologists we talk about the three factors that change the impact of a disease; changes to the host , to the agent , and to the environment . Thankfully, compared with the first wave of Omicron in the eastern states, we are seeing fewer people hospitalised now. During the initial Omicron surge, when Victoria and NSW reached active case number equivalent to today’s, there were 50 per cent – 100 per cent more people in hospital compared with now, and four times as many in ICU and between twice and four times as many on ventilators.
Omicron cases were initially concentrated in our young adults who generally have a lower risk of ending up in hospital, so that makes the difference in hospital figures even more striking. Young adults tend to have the highest exposure risk of us all given their work and socialising patterns, and therefore the highest risk of passing the virus on to others once they themselves acquired an infection.