Omicron: Dr Nick Coatsworth says Australia should welcome new variant
The world is watching with bated breath as a new Covid strain begins to spread but Australia shouldn’t fear the variant, according to a top health expert.
NSW
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The Omicron variant should be welcomed into Australia rather than feared, according to a top doctor.
Former Australian deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth told The Today Show this morning Aussies should be “a little less worried” about the new Covid variant, which has emerged from Africa and begun to spread globally in recent days.
Dr Coatsworth said if Omicron turned out to be less severe than the Delta strain — which saw thousands of deaths and several states in lockdown for months — then it should be welcomed into the country.
The responses of all Australia governments state and federal today have been very measured and encouraging in terms of their response to the #omicron variant, may it continue to be so #auspol#covid19aus
— Dr. Nick Coatsworth (@nick_coatsworth) November 29, 2021
He said the only thing that made Omicron a “variant of concern” was the rate of infection, and that the virus could actually be less potent than Delta.
“There’s too few cases at the moment (to tell) … if this is milder than Delta you actually want it to spread within your community. You want it to out compete Delta and become the pro-dominant circulating virus.
“So, that shows you how much more we have learn about this because it could be, it could be that we want Omicron to spread around the world as quickly as possible.”
So far Australia has two confirmed cases linked to the Omicron variant, asymptomatic returned travellers who flew in on the weekend from southern Africa.
NSW Health confirmed on Monday it was investigating another four potential cases, after three travellers who flew in from Africa on Sunday night and another returned traveller who had been quarantining at home since November 23 all tested positive to Covid.
Dr Coatsworth urged Australians not to panic over the new variant, and said there was no need to speed up Australia’s booster shot program.
“I definitely don’t think we should be waking up to any sort of panic … I don’t think there’s any strong evidence at the moment, apart from the fact that it’s got 30 mutations that those mutations are going to have the sort of negative effect that we think,” Dr Coatsworth said.
“I think based on the information we have at the moment we shouldn’t really change our plans. The only thing we should change is mild restrictions on the number of people coming into the country from certain other countries but at the moment everything else can go on as planned.”
It comes as South African Doctor Angelique Coetzee weighed in on her experience with the variant after being one of the first GPs to discover the new Covid strain.
Dr Coetzee told The Today Show she saw her first patient on November 18, a young man suffering a headache and fatigue, before more cases with similar symptoms began to show and she raised the alarm.
“After I saw (the man and his family) there were seven other people, it’s like a
light switch that’s been switched on all of a sudden you haven’t seen Covid patients coming in for between eight to 10 weeks and then all of a sudden you see them coming in,” Dr Coetzee said.
She said all confirmed Omicron cases had “less severe” symptoms.
“For patients with mild disease we have easily treated them at home with no complications up until now, they’re all healthy,” Dr Coetzee said.
“It might be the same … The same type of infectiousness as the Delta variant but the severity that we have currently seeing is not so severe.”
She added: “(Patient) have asymptomatic symptoms not the same as Delta, no loss of smell, no loss of taste, no stuffy nose, no cough, no fever or very little fever- I saw these whole 10 days only two patients with.
fever. Also their oxygen saturation was normal.”
But Dr Coetzee also said “more severe cases” could begin to pop up as South Africa goes deeper into the Omicron outbreak.
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