Sudbury immunologist encourages third COVID vaccine to fight off Omicron variant

As 2022 gets underway, COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket across Ontario and the country and a Sudbury immunologist says more needs to be learned to help get a handle on the latest variant.

Since late November, the Omicron variant has been causing case counts to rise. In December, the province reintroduced capacity limits at restaurants, bars and retailers.

On Monday, the Ontario government implemented new restrictions in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. Those restrictions include further capacity limits at retail stores, closing indoor dining at restaurants and delaying the start of in-person learning for students by two weeks.

Almost two years into the pandemic, Alain Simard, an immunologist with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, said he understands the public is frustrated still to be in this.

"We're all tired but at the same time, very discouraged that we're still talking about this and things seem to start over and over again," he said.

Simard said there is still lots of unknown information at this time.

"A few things that we do know, obviously, is that the number of cases are skyrocketing at record rates," he said.

"What we are not 100 per cent certain of is what explains it now."

Simard said the variant is more transmissible than previous ones, but added there are other reasons why cases are going up.

"There have been a few studies recently that show that the virus, it's incubation period, is a lot shorter than previous variants," he said.

"For Delta, for example, it was around five days."

With the Omicron variant, he said that the incubation period is around three days.

"That means a day or two after you were infected, you're already contagious and already passing it on to people."

Early reports have suggested that the Omicron variant can cause less severe infection in people. Simard said so far, data is showing that the Omicron variant is impacting people who are fully vaccinated less severely than those who are not vaccinated.