Let us pray and wait for more understanding about Omicron

Researchers around the world are trying their best to understand more about Omicron. Meanwhile, Omicron is spreading in Australia. It is expected that more people will be infected especially when Australia is opening up to the world and people are moving around in the coming of the Christmas and New Year vacation. It is reasonable that we should be more cautious with various protection measures to be reinstated including masks, social distancing, and use of disinfectants in public. Of course, it will be wise for people to consider giving up indoor gatherings with a huge audience.

The whole world has been fighting with Covid-19 for nearly two years. Vaccines have produced great hope for people to exit from this pandemic. Evidence suggests vaccines might not provide complete protection for Omicron to invade our body. However, up to this moment, most Omicron cases are mild especially for the vaccinated, which gives us hope that vaccines do give protection for people not to be severely infected. We need to wait for more information from studying this variant. At this moment, we have no choice but to be cautious.

The Australian government clearly do not want to give tougher control at this time of the season. In the coming Wednesday, the Australian border will be opened towards overseas students and short term workers. State governments accepted the “living with the virus” strategy, hoping that severe cases will be limited and controllable. The government shortens the duration for booster dose to five months and starts to vaccinate the 5-11 years old from 10 January 2022 onwards. These are all the measures Australians prepared to work Omicron with during this period.

An alarming signal is the increasing number of infected cases in NSW and Victoria. The reproduction factor for Covid-19 is clearly close or above 1. In the near future, this factor may increase rapidly, and become uncontrollable. In such a case, severe measures might be imposed again as expressed by some European governments.

So Australians, let us pray that the situation will not worsen until we know more about Omicron.

Raymond Chow

Publisher, BlessingCALD