COVID Odyssey: Summer Surprise 2 ~ Post#924: NZ COVID-19~ OMICRON has reached NZ border

Yesterday Thursday 16 December it was officially announced at a televised media conference that the OMICRON variant has been detected at an MIQ facility in Christchurch.

We extend our previous chart to include the OMICRON variant. The horizontal access shows potential values for Ro.

For the previous chart see:

COVID Odyssey: Worldwide Winter Windup 6 ~ Ro ~ Estimates for the Alpha and Delta variants

It is too early to anticipate how infectious OMICRON may be.

We centre OMICRON on the Ro value corresponding in our formula near a daily increase of r = SQRT(3) [centre at 12.75] which corresponds to cases potentially tripling in a two-day period without isolation. This gives an estimated range for Ro for OMICRON of 10.875 to  14.625, say 10.9 to 14.6 (1 d.p.).

For definitions see:

Welcome

For a daily increase of r we obtain the estimates below:

We use our formula for estimating Ro from r given an infectious period of n = 10 days.

We obtain corresponding estimates for Ro:

We decide to position OMICRON in the chart centred near the Ro value corresponding to r = SQRT(3).

This means that OMICRON cases may triple every two days.

If this turns out to be correct, one person infected with the OMICRON variant is likely to infect on average between 11 and 14.5 other people over a ten-day period.

Regardless r = SQRT(3) [~ 1.732 and Ro ~ 12.73] will be well within the range for the OMICRON variant.

This potentially makes OMICRON as infectious as the measles. See:

COVID Odyssey: Winter Windup 13 ~ Is the COVID-19 Delta variant as infectious as measles?

NZ Herald today 17 December:

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