Vaccines, pills and data offer some Christmas cheer in face of Omicron

US: Omicron advanced across the world on Thursday, with health experts warning the battle against the Covid-19 variant was far from over despite two drugmakers saying their vaccines protected against it and signs it carries a lower risk of hospitalisation.

Coronavirus infections have soared wherever the highly infectious Omicron variant has spread, triggering new restrictions in many countries and record new cases. But in another glimmer of hope two days before Christmas, a US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) official said data indicated that both Merck & Co Inc’s (MRK.N) and Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) Covid-19 anti-virals are effective against the variant. There were encouraging signs too about hospitalisation rates from Britain and South Africa, although the head of a leading African health agency joined the World Health Organization in cautioning that it was too soon to draw broader conclusions. “Let’s be careful not to extrapolate what we are seeing in South Africa across the continent, or across the world,” Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) chief John Nkengasong said. Nevertheless, US stock indexes and yields on US Treasuries both climbed on Thursday, partly on new optimism after Omicron helped ratchet up market volatility for much of the last month of 2021. “Today is a very calm day. It’s the relief over Omicron apparently not being as bad as we feared,” Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at LPL Financial, said.

Even as Omicron has begun leaving an imprint on parts of the US economy, economists say it so far seems unlikely to prevent a second straight year of above-trend growth.

– INDIA TODAY