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A two-shot course of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccination may offer 70% protection against being hospitalized with the Covid-19 omicron variant, South Africa’s largest medical-insurance provider Discovery Ltd. said. The protection is maintained across age groups and in the face of a range of chronic illnesses, Ryan Noach, the chief executive officer of Discovery Health Ltd., said at a briefing Tuesday. Pfizer is 33% effective against infection by the omicron variant, he said. (Kew, 12/14)

The new omicron variant is substantially more contagious and reduces the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, but people who are fully vaccinated are still largely protected against severe disease, according to a study from South Africa released Tuesday. The variant, which is believed to have emerged this fall in southern Africa, looks poised to take over the world, as delta did before it. Omicron accounts for 90% of COVID-19 cases in South Africa and is a growing problem in Europe. It has been seen in at least 30 U.S. states, though the delta variant still dominates the American outbreak. (Weintraub and Weise, 12/14)

Omicron appears to cause less severe illness than earlier variants of the coronavirus but is more resistant to the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine widely used in South Africa, according to the first major private study since omicron was first detected last month. The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases showed that risk of hospital admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March 2020. (Wroughton, 12/14)

New data from South Africa and Europe hint that Omicron cases are poised to explode in the U.S., where the vast majority of the population isn't well protected against infection. A new analysis by South Africa's largest private insurer paints a picture of Omicron's clinical risk: Two doses of Pfizer's vaccine appear to be significantly less effective against severe disease with Omicron than previous variants. But the variant is less likely to lead to hospitalization in adults than the original version. (Owens, 12/14)

The Omicron variant of coronavirus is spreading quickly in several countries where it has been discovered. Even if it causes only mild disease -- and that's far from certain -- that could still mean many people end up in the hospital and dying. It's killed at least one person in the UK and put 10 into the hospital -- most of them vaccinated, according to government authorities. "It is spreading faster than the Delta variant in South Africa where Delta circulation was low, but also appears to spread more quickly than the Delta variant in other countries where the incidence of Delta is high, such as in the United Kingdom," the World Health Organization said in a technical briefing last week. (Fox, 12/14)

Alaska’s first reported case of the omicron variant on Monday comes as the state is seeing a steady decline in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. The state on Monday reported one virus-related death and 422 new cases over the weekend, a significant drop in cases compared to earlier in the fall when a surge overwhelmed much of the state’s health care capacity, sickening and killing hundreds. (Krakow, 12/13)

A recent seroprevalence survey in Gauteng, the South African province where the omicron variant was first identified, showed that 72% of the population had a previous infection with the coronavirus, said Shabir Madhi, a vaccinologist at the University of the Witwatersrand. That compares with about 20% when the beta variant emerged a year ago, said Madhi, who led trials of both AstraZeneca Plc’s and Novavax Inc.’s shots in South Africa. “The evolution of the omicron variant is coming at a very different stage of the pandemic,” Madhi said in an interview with the Global Health Crisis Coordination Center. “That is important to keep at the back of our minds when we see what is unfolding in South Africa and what we might see in other settings, which might have a very different epidemiology.” (Sguazzin, 12/14)