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Finally, first hand information! These are the symptoms of Omicron, the reports are from a doctor who has been infected with Omicron himself.
Omicron Symptoms – Doctor Reports!
From several members of a soccer club in Portugal to two travelers in the U.S., a new COVID variant has made its way around the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the omicron variant has been detected in at least 24 countries so far. Virus experts warn that there is still much we don’t know about the latest version of the virus, as it was only identified on November 24, but there are concerns that the high number of mutations in the Omikron variant could mean it spreads more easily and escapes immune responses. Currently, we only have anecdotal information, including the symptoms Omikron causes in those infected.
Cardiologist reports his experience
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E. Maor, MD, a cardiologist working in Tel Aviv, Israel, was the first Israeli to test positive for the new Omikron variant on Nov. 27, the New York Times reports. Maor told the news agency that he had a fever, sore throat, and sore muscles, among other symptoms, after the positive test.
Maor also said he didn’t feel better until five days later and was concerned that the variant had hit him so hard, despite being fully vaccinated. “Despite everything, despite the vaccinations and the booster shot, I was in bed for 48 hours,” Maor said in a phone interview with The New York Times.
But those are still mild symptoms compared to what others have experienced with the virus. Angelique Coetzee, a South African doctor with a private practice in Pretoria and chairwoman of the South African Medical Association (SAMA), recently told The Telegraph she had seen Omicron cases that had strange but mild symptoms.
No loss of sense of smell or taste so far
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“Their symptoms were so different and so mild than those I had treated before,” Coetzee said, noting that most of the Omicron patients she had treated felt “so tired” and severely fatigued. But none of the patients had suffered from loss of taste or smell, a telltale symptom in earlier COVID variants.
Another doctor in South Africa, Mvuyisi Mzukwa, the vice chairman of SAMA, told CNN on December 1 that the new variant primarily affects unvaccinated people, as is the case with COVID overall. “We have found that the people who are admitted to the hospital are largely unvaccinated, about 90 percent of them are unvaccinated,” he said in an interview on CNN’s New Day. Like the other doctors, Mzukwa said he has noticed milder cases of Omicron among those who have been vaccinated.
Referring to his own Omicron infection, Maor said, “If I hadn’t been vaccinated, I probably would have ended up in the hospital.”
Not so contagious, though?
The Israeli cardiologist had attended a large staff meeting, worked with several patients, gone to a cardiology conference, gone to a piano concert and had dinner with extended family members in the three days before his positive test, the New York Times reports. But five days after his first positive test, only one of his close contacts had tested positive: a 70-year-old colleague with whom he had taken a 90-minute car ride to the cardiology conference.
That number could still rise, as testing is ongoing and it can take several days for the virus to be detected. However, according to the news agency, at least 50 people he had come into contact with had been PCR tested, and at least 10 of them had tested negative at least three times. This could be due to the fact that most of the people Maor had come in contact with had received three vaccinations with Pfizer’s vaccine.
“This shows us that Omicron is not as contagious in some cases when you are vaccinated,” Dr. Gili Regev-Yochay, head of the infectious disease epidemiology department at Sheba Medical Center in Israel, told The New York Times.
At the same time, many viral experts, including Regev-Yochay, have cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from these isolated cases. COVID White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said it will likely be two to four weeks before enough research is available to make definitive statements about the severity and transmissibility of the new variant.
“Given the small number of cases, it is very difficult to know whether or not this particular variant will lead to severe disease,” he said. Although some preliminary information from South Africa suggests that there are no unusual symptoms associated with the variant, we don’t know and it’s too early to tell,” Fauci said during a White House press briefing on November 30.