Omicron Is Fast Moving, but Perhaps Less Severe, Early Reports Suggest

早期研究显示奥密克戎致病症状可能较轻

By Lynsey Chutel, Richard Pérez-Peña and Emily Anthes

琳西·丘特尔、理查德·佩雷斯·佩尼亚、埃米莉·安特斯

（来源：英文巴士）

（2021年12月14日）

The Covid-19 virus is spreading faster than ever in South Africa, the country’s president said Monday, an indication of how the new Omicron variant is driving the pandemic, but there are early indications that Omicron may cause less serious illness than other forms of the virus.

南非总统周一表示，新冠病毒在该国的传播速度比以往任何时候都快，这表明新的奥密克戎变异株正在推动大流行，但有早期迹象表明，奥密克戎可能不像其他病毒变体那么容易导致重症。

Researchers at a major hospital complex in Pretoria reported that their patients with the coronavirus are much less sick than those they have treated before, and that other hospitals are seeing the same trends. In fact, they said, most of their infected patients were admitted for other reasons and have no Covid symptoms.

比勒陀利亚一家大型医院综合体的研究人员报告称，他们的新冠病毒患者比以前收治的患者病情要轻得多，其他医院也存在同样的倾向。他们说，事实上，他们的大多数新冠患者都是因为其他原因入院的，并且未呈现新冠症状。

But scientists cautioned against placing too much stock in either the potential good news of less severity, or bad news like early evidence that prior coronavirus infection offers little immunity to Omicron. The variant was discovered just last month, and more study is needed before experts can say much about it with confidence. Beyond that, the true impact of the coronavirus is not always felt immediately, with hospitalizations and deaths often lagging considerably behind initial outbreaks.

但科学家告诫称，不要在症状较轻这个潜在好消息上寄托太多希望，也不要轻信可能的坏消息——早期证据证明，先前感染带来的免疫力对奥密克戎作用有限。该变异株是上个月才发现的，专家还需要更多的研究才能有把握地谈论它。除此之外，新冠病毒的真正破坏力并不总是立即出现，住院和死亡人数往往远远晚于最初的暴发时间。

Dr. Emily S. Gurley, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said of the signs that the variant is less severe, “It would not be shocking if that’s true, but I’m not sure we can conclude that yet.”

约翰斯·霍普金斯大学彭博公共卫生学院的流行病学家艾米丽·S·格利博士在谈到该变异株导致的症状较轻的迹象时说，“如果的确如此，那也不会令人感到惊讶，但我不确定我们现在就能得出结论。”

In the absence of more hard information, governments have reacted to Omicron with sharp restrictions on international travel and new vaccination requirements. World leaders who were accused of responding too slowly or weakly earlier in the pandemic are eager to be seen as taking action, though some experts question whether the travel restrictions are an overreaction.

各国政府在缺乏更可靠信息的情况下对奥密克戎做出反应，严格限制国际旅行和新的疫苗接种要求。一些世界领导人被指责在大流行初期反应过慢或抗疫不力，他们渴望人们看到他们在采取行动，然而一些专家质疑限制旅行是否反应过度。

The variant has spread rapidly and has been detected in more than 30 countries on six continents so far. Health officials and researchers say that it could be the most contagious form of the virus yet, and that it could soon displace the Delta variant that emerged last year as the predominant form. That has fueled fears that a world eager to emerge from two years of pandemic hardship could be headed into another cycle of illness, lockdown and economic suffering.

该变种传播迅速，迄今已在六大洲的30多个国家被发现。卫生官员和研究人员表示，它可能是迄今为止最具传染性的病毒形式，它可能很快取代去年出现的德尔塔变体，成为主流变异株。这加剧了人们的担忧，世界渴望从持续两年之久的大流行困境中解脱，却有可能再次进入疾病、封锁和经济困难的循环。

In Europe, as in South Africa, there are early indications that Omicron cases may be fairly mild, if easy to contract.

和南非一样，欧洲也有早期迹象表明奥密克戎的病例症状可能相当轻微，但容易感染。

In Britain, the government said Monday that the number of Omicron cases there had climbed to 336, two and a half times as many as on Friday. Denmark reported 261 cases, quadruple the number on Friday, and local media there have reported that a holiday lunch for high school students may have been a super-spreader event, with dozens of people catching the new variant.

在英国，政府周一表示，那里的奥密克戎病例数已攀升至336例，是周五的两倍半。丹麦报告了261例，是周五的四倍，当地媒体报道称，一场为高中生举办的节假日午餐会可能是超级传播事件，有数十人感染了这种新变异株。

Britain and Denmark do an unusually large amount of genomic sequencing of virus samples, to tell one variant from another and detect changes, which suggests that many Omicron cases in other countries are simply going undetected.

为了区分变异株并检测变化，英国和丹麦对病毒样本进行了不寻常的大规模基因组测序，结果显示其他国家有许多奥密克戎病例根本没有被发现。

（编辑：宋倩倩）