 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 are being reported in many countries across the world. A number of countries have either imposed or are considering imposing a host of restrictions to counter the rapid spread of the variant. South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa is among those who have been infected. While it is still too early to get a full-fledged understanding of the variant, studies by various experts have begun to shed some light on it. Does the Omicron variant spread faster than the Delta variant? Does it tend to cause fewer deaths and hospitalizations? How is the prevailing inequity in global distribution of vaccines affected the spread of the variant? Immunologist Dr Satyajit Rat answers these questions. What we've been seeing is emerging evidence that the Omicron variant or the Omicron strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has the capacity to spread at a fairly rapid rate with a doubling time of three to four days in where we have data for at least four countries with very different demographics. South Africa, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. Trevor Bedford, an epidemiology researcher at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Center in Seattle in the US has been modeling this and has put out some interesting results about this. And the most interesting result is that in all four countries, even though the absolute numbers of the Omicron strain cases are very, very different, ranging from a few score to a few hundred to a few thousand, the rate of spread seems to be pretty much comparable in all four countries. And what this might mean is that the strain is quite reliably capable of spreading significantly faster than the Delta strain is. And that's something for all of us across the world to be the global north or the global south to take note of and to plan for. In planning terms, the second issue that has arisen is, okay, the Omicron strain does spread very rapidly. Does it cause severe COVID illness as frequently as say the Delta strain does? The emerging evidence from South Africa, which is the most extensive evidence so far, is beginning to suggest that it may not be causing severe illness as frequently as the Delta strain is capable of doing. Now, there is a caveat here. And the caveat is that many people, if not most people infected with the Omicron variant in South Africa, seem to be relatively younger and middle-aged people. This may be because in South Africa, vaccination for COVID with existing vaccines has been ongoing, but has been focused much more on the elderly and much less on younger people. But it's also beginning to look as though it may be correct in the United Kingdom, where despite cases in excess of 1,000, very few of those relative to the Delta strain seem to be landing up seriously ill in hospital. And so far, there has been the declaration of one Omicron death in the UK. Now, this may be because Omicron in the UK is spreading in a mainly vaccinated population and is therefore spreading, but is not causing as severe illness with as much frequency. And that's a second component of this story. And if you look at it together, what it begins to look like is that we are going to see increases at a variety of places in the world of Omicron strain infections. And depending on the rate at which infection spreads in a given community, even if the percentage of people infected showing severe illness is relatively low, the speed of spread is going to determine how many people become severely ill at a time. And therefore, how many people need simultaneous medical critical care facilities at a time and whether those facilities can can bear up under that demand or not. And that's the other thing to be cautious and to plan for for all of us as governments and communities across the world. And finally, the issue of vaccines and protection that is thrown up by the Omicron strain. So what seems to be happening? All of this is provisional because all of this is based on very shaky preliminary evidence so far. But such evidence as there is seems to be suggesting that in vaccinated people, even infections with the Omicron strain, although they are quite possibly going to happen, will not lead to severe illness with as much frequency as in unvaccinated people. And if that is correct, then here is a conundrum. We know that the vaccines protect very well against severe illness or socialization and death. That's what they've been tested for. They've not been tested against mild or asymptomatic infection and protection therefore. And yet what we are doing across the world, particularly across the global north, is giving booster doses to already vaccinated people to provide them with even higher protection. And a black irony that has emerged is that booster doses given in just two countries of the global north, the UK and the USA, at about 80 million now exceed the number of doses of vaccine that have been given at all in a large swath of countries of the global south at about 70 million. Really this should not be an either this or that choice situation. We shouldn't be in a situation where we have to trade off between giving people across the global south basic vaccination versus giving other people either in the global north or privileged elites within the global south booster doses of vaccination. We should have by a year after the first vaccines where approved for emergency use, we should really have been in a worldwide effort at vaccine manufacture to the point where we could fulfill both of these requirements, that we have not done so is a deeply problematic black mark against the profit making vaccine manufacturing sector configuration based ways that we have chosen to address the pandemic this much for this week.