Be vigilant, official says

PAPUA New Guinea must be prepared and ready for Omicron and other emerging variants of the Coronavirus (Covid-19), a senior health official says.
Deputy pandemic response Controller Dr Daoni Esorom said Omicron was first detected in South Africa last Wednesday but there were still many unknowns about it.
The early signs, he said, were that it could be more transmissible but it was still not known what risks it posed to public health.
“Compared to other variants, Omicron has more than 32 mutations, Beta has nine mutations and Delta has nine on their spike proteins that helps them to bind on the human cells,” Dr Esorom said.
“Key information such as the transmissibility, infectivity, severity of infections, its ability to re-infect people and its outcomes on fully vaccinated people are still unknown.
“We have more questions yet to be answered on the effectiveness of current tests, therapeutics and on vaccines on this new variant.”
Despite not having much information yet about Omicron, Dr Esorom warned that the country needed to be vigilant.
“We must be prepared and not panic,” he said.
“We have to be concerned but not to overreact and do what is right to keep the variant out and if it does enter the country, we have to do the right things to mitigate its impact.
Dr Esorom assured the country that the Covid-19 National Control Centre team was working with its partners to ensure that the country’s borders were monitored and that appropriate quarantine and isolation measures would be implemented on people coming into PNG.
“We will adjust our testing strategies in order to detect cases and we are working with the Institute of Medical Research and a private laboratory in Port Moresby in order to undertake whole genomic sequencing to detect all the variants including those already identified including Alpha, Delta, Gamma and Omicron,” he said.
“PNG must have the whole genome sequencing technology and capability in order to support it.”
He said currently, PNG was sending its positive samples to the Doherty Institute in Melbourne to do the whole genome sequencing and that took between 3 and 4 weeks to get the results back.
“It’s a very slow turnaround time and by the time we get the results, it’s very late to even use the information except to include them in our data base.”