19 February 2022 | New Scientist | 7AS THE omicron variant
continues to surge around
the world, nations are having
to face up to life amid
continuing high infection rates.
On Monday, Northern Ireland’s
health minister Robin Swann
announced that the country’s
remaining legal covid-
requirements were to become
guidance instead from 15 February.
Northern Ireland isn’t alone.
Sweden and Denmark both lifted
their pandemic restrictions earlier
this month, despite daily infection
rates in the tens of thousands.
UK prime minister Boris Johnson
is expected to announce a plan for
“living with covid” for England
on 21 February, which is likely
to involve the end of isolationrequirements for people who
test positive for the virus.
But health advisers have
warned that the pandemic and
all its inherent risks – deaths from
covid-19, chronic illness from
long covid, higher risks to people
who are immunocompromised
and substantial pressure
on hospitals – is far from over.
“Immune-compromised patients
remain at very high risk, higher
risk than they’ve ever been before
in their lives,” says Lance Turtle at
the University of Liverpool, UK.
Many nations are hoping
that vaccination will make the
difference. South Korea and
Sweden have begun offering
fourth doses of covid-19 vaccines
to the clinically vulnerable.But the UK has been slow to
vaccinate its children. The US and
Israel began offering vaccines to
5-to-11-year-olds in November 2021,
and Australia and New Zealand
have recently begun vaccinating
this age group. The UK, in contrast,
has only recently started offering
covid-19 vaccinations to children
aged 5 to 11 who are vulnerable
or live with people who are
immunocompromised.
The UK government was
due to make an announcement
on vaccinating all children in
this age group on Monday, but
this has now been postponed to
21 February. Writing in The BMJ last
week, Christina Pagel at University
College London and three other
researchers described the UK asCountries worldwide are having to decide what “living with covid”
really looks like, report Alex Wilkins and Carissa WongRemoving restrictions
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Covid-an international outlier for
“not giving parents the choice of
whether to vaccinate their child”.
The US, meanwhile, has delayed
a decision on whether to approve
vaccination for children aged
6 months to 4 years. The US Food
and Drug Administration had
been due to decide on the Pfizer/
BioNTech vaccine for this age
group on 15 February, based on
data from two doses in a clinical
trial. However, the agency has
now decided to wait for data
from the third dose in this trial
before making a decision on the
vaccine’s use in under-5s, which
is expected in April.
While the omicron surge
seems to have peaked in some
countries, including the UK,
the World Health Organization
(WHO) noted on Tuesday that a
wave of infections is now passing
over eastern Europe, causing cases
to double in multiple countries.
The WHO warned that, as
countries such as Poland
consider lifting restrictions,
the threat level remains high.
Omicron is also causing
strain where authorities are
pursuing zero-covid strategies.
Daily infection numbers have
repeatedly broken records in Hong
Kong in recent weeks, numbering
2071 on 14 February. Hong Kong’s
chief executive Carrie Lam has said
that the wave has “overwhelmed
the city’s capacity of handling”.
While omicron may have
shifted expectations for how
nations can cope with covid-
in the mid-to-long term, the
prospect of further variants means
there are no certainties. “A variant
with any property could emerge
at any time, and it could be totally
different in terms of disease. It
could be worse, could be better,
could be the same, and that will
happen at random,” says Turtle. ❚A woman wearing
a mask in Belfast,
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