Oyogist has learned that Preliminary findings from two South African clinical trials suggest the Omicron coronavirus variant has a much higher rate of “asymptomatic carriage” than previous variants, which could explain why it has spread so rapidly across the globe.
The study was carried out few weeks after the Omicron infections surged High in South Africa last month.
As observed from the study, a far greater number of people tested positive for the coronavirus but were not showing symptoms compared to previous trials.
In the Ubuntu study evaluating the efficacy of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in people living with HIV, 31 per cent of 230 participants undergoing screening tested positive, with all 56 samples available for sequencing analysis verified to be Omicron.
“This is in stark contrast to the positivity rate pre-Omicron, which ranged from less than one per cent to 2.4 per cent,” the researchers said in a statement.
