The variant has implications for rapid testing and antibody treatments.
Fortunately, omicron seems less likely than previous versions of the coronavirus to cause deep lung infections that lead to serious complications, such as admissions to intensive care units, intubation and death. But the surge of cases means that vulnerable people, including the unvaccinated, immunocompromised, elderly and those with underlying health conditions, are still landing in hospital beds.
At the workplaces, “omicron outbreaks looked really different than delta outbreaks were looking before,” she says. “While daily PCR testing previous to omicron worked really well to pick up cases before they were infectious, we started noticing [with omicron] that people were slipping through the cracks. Transmissions were happening faster. People were becoming infectious faster and spreading it to other people.
Adamson’s group found that on the first two days of infection, PCR tests, which detect viral RNA, diagnosed infections that the rapid antigen tests didn’t. That’s not unusual. In fact, in previous COVID-19 outbreaks with other variants, Adamson relied on PCR tests to catch infections before they became contagious.
One of the characteristics emerging about omicron specifically is where it lives in the body. Compared with previous variants, omicron seems to be more abundant in some upper respiratory areas, such as the throat, than in the nose, at least in the early days of an infection. That locale means that a nose swab may be missing omicron early on, before viral levels are high.
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