Rising trend: 1,697 Omicron cases detected in Austria

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From Dec. 20 to 26, 1,218 of the new “variant of concern” were detected, according to recent data from the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES). The still dominant mutation B.1.617.2 aka Delta continues to be in retreat. At week 51, Delta was registered less than three times as often as Omicron – at week 50, the factor was still 16.

In week 50, the ratio of delta to omicron was 5,475 to 332, but one week later it was 3,307 to 1,218, with the overall number of cases decreasing. The highest number of cases of B.1.1.529 aka Omikron continues to be in Vienna, with a total of 1,065, while the figure for Austria as a whole is 1,697.

Only in the federal capital, all positive PCR samples are pre-tested for virus variants. There, Omicron is already dominant, “50 percent of the relevant infection incidence was exceeded on Dec. 26,” as the spokesman for Vienna’s City Health Councillor Peter Hacker (SPÖ), Mario Dujakovic, announced on Twitter, “A spike in infections is rather not to be expected this year. We still see dampening effects from the lockdown,” was his further forecast.

Already far behind follow the provinces of Lower and Upper Austria with 160 and 134 cases, respectively, and Salzburg with a total of 126 – the remaining provinces still have less than 100 cases. Incidentally, Omicron was confirmed for the first time in Austria in calendar week 47 from November 22 to 28. At that time, there were six infected persons who had been proven to be infected with B.1.1.529.

Given a doubling rate of two to three days, the current development in Vienna is plausible, but the delta cases are going down as long-term effects of the lockdown, Andreas Bergthaler of the Research Center for Molecular Medicine (CeMM) of the Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) told “Ö1-Mittagsjournal.” “In all likelihood, we are at a turning point,” Bergthaler continued, adding that the new infection figures would probably rise massively again in the next few days. As far as the dangerousness of Omicron is concerned, according to figures from Great Britain, this lies between that of the Alpha and Delta variants – and thus a burden on hospitals is probably to be feared.