- [Narrator] Scientists in South Africa were the first
to raise alarms about Omicron.
And virologists in this lab have been leading the way
on researching the fast spreading variant.
- The variant has been studied in South Africa
longer than it has been studied in other places.
And this lets us understand it better
and enables us to kind of inform the rest of the world.
- [Narrator] These researchers are pooling their findings
with results from other labs around the world
and a clearer picture of Omicron characteristics
has begun to emerge.
They say the strain possibly causes milder symptoms
but is more resistant to vaccines and more infectious.
- Early data suggest that Omicron is more transmissible
than Delta with a doubling time of about two days.
- [Narrator] As the variant poses a challenge
for governments everywhere,
we visited this lab to understand
what scientists have learned about Omicron.
Alex Sigal and his team of virologists
tested the new strain of the virus against the Pfizer shot.
- So I'm preparing the cells for infection tomorrow.
So it's all starting here.
- [Narrator] Their analysis showed that the variant
can partially evade protection from vaccines
or prior immunity.
- The fact that it's more likely to infect people
who are vaccinated but it's less likely to cause
serious illness compared to the other variants
is exactly what we see in our work as well.
- [Narrator] Their research predicted that for people
who have been vaccinated, effectiveness against infection
is 35% compared with 72% for people who have been vaccinated
and who have immunity from a prior infection.
These findings were roughly in line
with another recent real-world study.
But it's difficult to draw broad conclusions
from South Africa, which compared with Europe and the US
has a younger population.
It also has a relatively low vaccination rate
as compared with places like the UK.
While there's still limited data,
Sigal's team has also observed that symptoms
from this strain might be less severe.
Another group of researchers in South Africa
found that even though the number of cases is rising,
the risk of infection of hospital admission
for infected people is 29% lower
compared with the first wave in 2020.
- So far the infections have been mild, mostly mild here
and there might be several reasons for that.
One reason is there's a lot more pre-existing immunity.
There are a lot more people who are previously infected
with a different variants before Omicron came on the scene
and also considerable number of people now in South Africa
who were vaccinated, that wasn't here before.
But there might be other reasons.
Perhaps the virus itself is a little bit different.
This we don't know yet.
- [Narrator] Even if the variant might be less virulent,
the sheer number of cases could still lead
to a surge in hospitalizations as the strain seems to be
far more transmissible than others.
- For a variant like Omicron,
it's kind of a Frankenstein's monster of mutation.
It's heavily mutated.
What that means is it gains certain abilities.
One of these abilities is to escape from an immune response
to a previous infection or to vaccination.
And the second ability is to transmit better.
- [Narrator] That's prompting governments in the US
and Europe to accelerate roll-outs of booster shots.
Early studies have suggested that another Pfizer shot
will increase protection against Omicron.
But the majority of the world's
still hasn't been fully vaccinated.
And South Africa only begins it's rollout
of booster shots in January.
Global leaders are now weighing the evidence
as they decide what policies to implement
and how to best protect their populations.
- Everybody is of course worried
and they wanna predict what is gonna happen.
So it's a very much a globalized effort now.
In South Africa, we happen to have
a very good research community for infectious disease
and we're able to make a lot of progress
because also, it started here before elsewhere
and we able to say something to the rest of the world
and give some predictions.