The Project guest’s dire warning about Omicron variant

A top medical expert has issued a dire warning about the newest Covid variant on The Project – leaving host Waleed Aly “petrified.”

A top US epidemiologist has issued a dire warning to those unconcerned about the new Omicron Covid variant rapidly spreading across the globe, describing the notion that it’s a milder version of the disease as a “sweet little lie”.

Appearing on Monday’s episode of The Project, epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding’s worrying predictions clearly rattled host Waleed Aly, who dubbed one of the public health scientist’s responses “the scariest answer I’ve heard this year”.

Feigl-Ding appeared on the show as 15 new cases of the Omicron variant were recorded across New South Wales, and with the vaccine rollout for under-12s fast approaching.

Feigl-Ding told The Project hosts that, with a new variant circulating, Australians should be vaccinating children “as soon as possible”.

“There’s been a lot of misinformation last year that kids can’t be infected, kids are immune – that’s not true. If anything, the Delta variant is much more severe in children, hospitalisation rates are much higher, and that’s before Omicron,” he said.

Lisa Wilkinson and Eric Feigl-Ding on The Project.

“Kids do get sick, kids do get hospitalised and they do die. Please protect them against Omicron – vaccinating them is of the highest urgency.”

Feigl-Ding described early evidence out of South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first reported, as “very alarming”.

Over the weekend, government adviser Waasila Jassat told reporters in the Johannesburg area, where the virus is spreading widely, there has been “quite a sharp increase” in hospital admissions “across all age groups but particularly in the under-fives”.

“Hospitalisations are absolutely soaring,” said Feigl-Ding.

“Hospitalisations in children are about sixfold higher than previous waves. Omicron is not mild in any way … It’s already outpacing the previous waves, even despite higher vaccination rates. The data is very bad, and we have to not try to want to believe in the sweet little lies that we hear that it’s mild – it’s not.”

Project panellist Peter Helliar asked where we might be in the life of this pandemic, prompting a dispiriting answer from Feigl-Ding, who says the pandemic is “far from over,” pointing to what he called a “vaccine apartheid” in regions like southern Africa, where new variants are able to emerge in populations with low vaccination rates.

Waleed Aly: “I am petrified.”

“We’re eventually going to shoot ourselves in the foot, because another variant like omicron – or worse – will arise, and it will restart the whole pandemic system,” he said.

Feigl-Ding noted that World Health Organisation had already announced they may switch to using stars and constellations if they run out of Greek letters to name Covid variants – a fact that left host Waleed Aly stunned.

“I am petrified that the thing they went to after the Greek alphabet was the universe, as though we needed something that infinite to capture what might happen in the pandemic. That is the scariest answer I think I’ve heard this year.”

Not all medical experts share Feigl-Ding’s views on Omicron – one leading voice even believes Omicron could, counterintuitively, spell “the end of Covid”.

“I actually think there is a silver lining here, and this may signal the end of Covid-19, with it attenuating itself to such an extent that it is highly contagious but does not cause severe disease. That’s what happened with Spanish flu,” said Dr Richard Friedland, CEO of the Netcare Group, which operates more than 50 hospitals in South Africa.