johannesburg the omicron variant of coronavirus may reduce the incidence of severe covid19 disease and the infection may become less disruptive to individuals and society in future according to a study conducted by researchers in south africathe findings of the yettobe peerreviewed study are consistent with the previous observations of omicron displacing delta since the variant can elicit immunity which neutralises deltathe researchers from africa health research institute observed in samples from 23 people infected with omicron in november and december that the variant escapes neutralising immunity elicited by delta infectionthis indicates that omicron can reinfect delta infected individuals but not viceversa giving omicron an advantage over delta they saidthe implications of such displacement would depend on whether omicron is indeed less pathogenic than delta if so then the incidence of covid19 severe disease would be reduced and the infection may shift to become less disruptive to individuals and society they authors of the study notedthe finding is an update to the study by the same research team which found enhancement of immunity against delta variant with omicron infectionwe were able to add study participants to see more clearly the effect of vaccination professor alex sigal from africa health research institute tweeted on tuesdaythe earlier part of the study posted on the preprint repository medrxiv used data from 15 previously vaccinated and unvaccinated people who were infected with the omicron variantthe scientists used plasma a blood product which contains antibodies from the participants to test the ability of the antibodies to control both omicron and delta in the lab a socalled neutralisation testthe results show a developing antibody response to omicron with neutralisation increasing 14fold over this timehowever the team also observed that the participants developed some enhanced immunity against the delta variant with delta neutralisation increasing 44foldthe study also showed that vaccinated participants were able to mount a better neutralising response against delta while the response in unvaccinated participants was more variablehopefully all this means delta is on its way out as omicron may shut the door on delta reinfections provided enough people vaccinate the unvaccinated lose out on the extra omicron protection and dont gain a boost to delta said sigalthe omicron variant of sarscov2 the virus which causes covid19 was first identified in november last year in south africa and botswanathe variant has been shown to be highly transmissible and have extensive evasion of neutralising antibody immunity elicited by vaccination and previous sarscov2 infection