In lieu of reliable data concerning the omicron variant, here's some anecdotal, speculative, and unreliable (but somewhat interesting) information:
>>>Those who have already had other variants of coronavirus do not appear to be protected against Omicron but vaccines are still believed to protect against severe disease, according to top scientists from the global health body and South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
"Previous infection used to protect against Delta but now with Omicron that doesn't seem to be the case," said Anne von Gottberg, microbiologist at NICD.
The full picture in South Africa will not become clear until "people get so sick that they need to go to hospital" which is generally "three, four weeks later," says Prof Salim Abdool Karim of the Africa Task Force for Coronavirus.
"But the feedback we're getting from the ground is that there's really no red flags - we're not seeing anything dramatically different, what we're seeing is what we are used to," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.<<<
The new Omicron variant has now become dominant, the country's top medical scientists say.
www.bbc.com