Countries are scrambling to stop a new covid variant

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Countries are scrambling to stop a new covid variant
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Analysis confirmed that the new variant was spreading fast in many provinces in South Africa, even though the numbers were still small. This pattern suggests that Omicron may be outcompeting Delta

At the moment, these are only fears based on hints drawn from early data on Omicron emerging from South Africa. Whether these fears will come to pass is far from certain. It will take weeks or even months before there is solid evidence from laboratory and other studies on how much of a threat Omicron really poses. In the meantime many countries are trying to stop the new variant from arriving on their shores inside travellers—and rightly so.

At first it seemed as if the infections were linked to one big superspreading event, such as a student party. That would be the sort of outbreak in which a new variant erupts briefly and then dies away. But new cases in Gauteng instead became more dispersed over time. That prompted South African scientists to look at the genomic sequence of viral samples, which is how they spotted the new variant.

With mutations, quantity is not necessarily quality. But several of those in Omicron have been found in studies of other variants to make the virus more infectious. Some of them make it easier for SARS-CoV-2 to evade the body’s innate immune response , others weaken its antibody response . Various combinations of Omicron’s mutations are present in all of the variants of concern to have emerged so far.

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