The omicron variant of the coronavirus may represent close to 95% of all new COVID-19 cases in the United States, and doctors are reporting the symptoms they’re seeing in new patients.
Dr. Carole Freiberger, a physician at Saint Luke’s Critical Care, told the Kansas City Star that fully vaccinated COVID-19 patients have had symptoms similar to the common cold, or no COVID-19 symptoms at all
- She said the most common omicron variant symptoms include: runny nose, stuffy nose, sore throat, fatigue and headaches.
Freiberger said the omicron variant symptoms have been much different than previous COVID-19 strains.
- “You know when you get a really bad cold, and you feel lousy, and there’s mostly the upper respiratory-type symptoms is more what we’re seeing now,” Freiberger said.
- “As opposed to when the original and the delta variant were raging, we were seeing a lot more high fevers, cough and body aches, those were the main top three symptoms you would see.”
The omicron variant appears to be more transmissible compared to earlier COVID-19 strains and variants, changing the way fully vaccinated people have to deal with the virus.
- Early research suggests the omicron variant has the ability to evade COVID-19 vaccines, as I wrote for the Deseret News,
Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, an infectious disease expert from St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania, told WNEP-TV that the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t always stop the omicron variant and that’s because the vaccine isn’t perfect.
- “What was the main purpose of the COVID vaccine, is the same way that we look at an influenza vaccine, and that is to keep one away from the most serious consequences of getting the disease. What we are speaking about there is hospitalization and obviously very severe hospitalization and in intensive care unit and also tragically, death. In that situation, the COVID vaccine has been very good at doing its job,” he said.