Heavily mutated Omicron variant puts scientists on alert

Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of the mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.

A top priority is to follow the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana earlier this month and has since turned up in a traveller arriving in Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant s properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.

We re flying at warp speed, says Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose lab is gauging the variant s potential to dodge immunity from vaccines and previous infections. There are anecdotal reports of reinfections and of cases in vaccinated individuals, but at this stage it s too early to tell anything , Moore adds.

via www.nature.com

For obvious reasons, I’m not feeling terribly pro-virologist these days. But I suppose not all virologists are in the business of creating viruses that kill more people than the Holocaust did, so I should give those of them that are trying to manage the viral outbreak the benefit of the doubt. So perhaps you will excuse the peppy, science-writing tone of this article. We’re all in this together, etc., etc.