this is what the virus causing covid19
looked like when it was first detected
in wuhan china now scientists have
identified a new variant called omicron
it has 30 mutations affecting these
spike proteins which the virus uses to
attach itself to human cells to infect
them this is a clarion call as far as
i'm concerned it does appear that
omicron spreads very rapidly
and can be spread between people who are
double vaccinated scientists in south
africa first sounded the alarm over the
variant as people start to move even
more over the next few weeks this will
be all over it has been detected in a
growing number of locations around the
world prompting governments including
the us to restrict travel from southern
africa and israel to ban entry to all
foreign nationals it's too early to know
how concerned we should be about this
but there are enough signals that this
is something that's important that needs
to be investigated the variant was
declared a variant of concern by the
world health organization the agency
said there could be an increased risk of
covid19 re-infection with omicron
compared to other variants and
authorities say it could be more
transmissible a number of cases have
been linked to south africa where
scientists believe it could have caused
a spike in infections the number of
infections detected per day rose sharply
to nearly 3 000 cases on sunday from
roughly 200 cases just two weeks earlier
this new variant has more than 50
mutations more than 30 of them are in
the spike protein which is the part
through which the virus latches onto the
human cell and while there's a lot of
mutations that we've never seen there's
a bunch that
in previous variants have shown to make
the bearing either more contagious or
allow it to evade parts of the immune
response that was triggered by a vaccine
or by a past infection
the omicron variant has twice as many
mutations as the delta variant a highly
contagious strain that was identified in
india october of last year and became
the dominant form of the virus around
the world now scientists are racing to
investigate how widespread the omicron
variant could be it's hard to know
exactly how much it's spread most cases
don't get diagnosed in an even fewer
number gets sequenced so whatever number
of cases are officially reported or
whatever number of countries that have
officially reported cases that is likely
an underestimate with an efficiently
spreading respiratory virus so i suspect
you'll find more cases in more countries
pfizer moderna and other vaccine makers
said they have plans in place to adapt
their vaccines following the emergence
of omicron beyond tech which developed
one of the most commonly used covid19
vaccines together with pfizer said they
expect to be able to tweak their vaccine
in around 100 days if needed when it
comes to variants when they possess
certain mutations that have already been
associated with certain changes in the
behavior of the virus like the ability
to evade vaccines or monoclonal
antibodies or prior immunity or the
ability to transmit more efficiently
those have to be taken seriously and
have to be investigated because it may
change how we need to respond to or
think about the virus and the trajectory
of the pandemic scientists have also
warned for months that the risk of new
variants is higher where vaccination
rates are lower especially in areas with
people who are immunocompromised
in south africa only about one-fourth of
the population is fully vaccinated it's
nearly 60 percent in the us this i think
is not a coincidence that it arose or
was detected in a place with a low
vaccination level which tells us that
the more vaccination we get into people
the higher the vaccination numbers are
the more resilient we're going to be to
variants like this
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