Forcing everyone with Omicron into extended isolation would shut down a lot of things over the next few weeks (with little upside to compensate) and if this included hospital staff it likely kills more people rather than less people.
I wonder—could hospitals establish a strict enough boundary between Covid and non-Covid areas so that staff who are infected but with no (or super mild) symptoms could still work in the area where everyone else already has Covid anyway? Or would that lead to inevitable leaks across the boundary? Or would it require too much shuffling of people to different positions they don’t know well enough?
Kai looks at the question of how much of increased transmissibility is evasion, versus being more infectious (I’d add versus there being a shorter generation time, as well).
Greater infectiousness would be one possible cause of shorter generation times, right? That would look like Omicron and Delta ramping up the viral load/viral shedding in an infected person at roughly the same pace, but Omicron infecting at a lower viral dose (as suggested by the test sensitivity findings), so it starts infecting sooner. Then that would also mean that as the infection is cleared and shedding declines, Omicron would presumably continue infecting longer.
I wonder—could hospitals establish a strict enough boundary between Covid and non-Covid areas so that staff who are infected but with no (or super mild) symptoms could still work in the area where everyone else already has Covid anyway? Or would that lead to inevitable leaks across the boundary? Or would it require too much shuffling of people to different positions they don’t know well enough?
Greater infectiousness would be one possible cause of shorter generation times, right? That would look like Omicron and Delta ramping up the viral load/viral shedding in an infected person at roughly the same pace, but Omicron infecting at a lower viral dose (as suggested by the test sensitivity findings), so it starts infecting sooner. Then that would also mean that as the infection is cleared and shedding declines, Omicron would presumably continue infecting longer.