This means that by the end of calendar week 50 there were a total of 297 confirmed cases of the new variant. This emerges from the update of the variant report published on Monday by the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES).
Omikron was therefore first registered in Austria in calendar week 47, at that time there were six. In calendar week 48, 32 cases were registered, in week 49 there were 48. In the past week there was now a sharp increase with 211 more Omicron cases. Incidentally, 193 of the 297 cases of the new variant were confirmed in Vienna.
The totals are still low, however. The delta variant is still dominant, of which 1,293 new cases were added last week – albeit with a strong downward trend. In calendar week 49 there were 2,787 delta cases, in week 48 4,812 and in week 47 even 5,769.
Thousands of cases in the EU
Since last Thursday up to and including Sunday, 1,533 further cases of the worrying Omicron variant of the coronavirus have been confirmed in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). This increased the number of clearly proven Omikron cases to a total of 4,691. The EU health authority ECDC announced on Monday on its website.
Confirmed cases are now reported from 28 countries. In absolute numbers, most of the cases of the spreading SARS-CoV-2 variant are in Norway with 2,060, according to the EU authority. After Norway announced that previously suspected Omikron cases are now confirmed, the ECDC now counts both categories – including the probable ones – among the confirmed. Denmark has so far reported 726 omicron cases that have been confirmed by whole genome sequencing – however, a further 14,726 suspected cases based on variant-specific PCR tests are known.
According to the current data, most infections with the Omikron variant lead to an asymptomatic or mild course, according to the ECDC. No deaths related to Omikron have been reported within the EU or EEA. “These figures should be assessed with caution, as the number of confirmed cases is too small to understand whether the clinical spectrum of Omikron differs from that of the previously discovered variants,” the EU authority points out in this context .
The first omicron infections were travel-related – the variant had spread across the globe from southern Africa. An increasing number of cases have now been reported where the source of infection is clearly in Europe and the virus is spreading in the form of clusters.
Source: Nachrichten
