As the world waits and wonders about the seriousness of the new Omicron variant to C-19, at least one scientist for the UK gov’t advisory board on such matters says an investigation is needed but the world is not facing a disaster. Professor Calum Semple is quoted in the Daily Mail newspaper: ‘You might get a snuffle or a headache or a filthy cold but your chance of coming into hospital or intensive care or sadly dying are greatly diminished by the vaccine and still will be going into the future.’ ‘If you can slow the virus coming into your country it gives you more time for your booster campaign to get ahead of it,’ he went on. ‘It also gives the scientists longer to understand more about the virus in case there is anything we really should be worrying about.’
And Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said ‘it is extremely unlikely that a reboot of a pandemic in a vaccinated population like we saw last year is going to happen’. Speaking to Radio 4’s Today program, he also insisted that vaccines could be effective at preventing serious disease from the Omicron variant.
