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Saturday, March 15, 2025

EXPLAINER: What we know and don’t know on new COVID variant

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1202 days ago
20211129

By MARIA CHENG, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

 

LON­DON (AP) — South African sci­en­tists iden­ti­fied a new ver­sion of the coro­n­avirus that they say is be­hind a re­cent spike in COVID-19 in­fec­tions in Gaut­eng, the coun­try’s most pop­u­lous province.

It’s un­clear where the new vari­ant first emerged, but sci­en­tists in South Africa alert­ed the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion in re­cent days, and it has now been seen in trav­el­ers ar­riv­ing in sev­er­al coun­tries, from Aus­tralia to Is­rael to the Nether­lands.

On Fri­day, the WHO des­ig­nat­ed it as a “vari­ant of con­cern,” nam­ing it “omi­cron” af­ter a let­ter in the Greek al­pha­bet.

 

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT OMI­CRON?

 

Health Min­is­ter Joe Phaahla said the vari­ant was linked to an “ex­po­nen­tial rise” of cas­es in the last few days.

From just over 200 new con­firmed cas­es per day in re­cent weeks, South Africa saw the num­ber of new dai­ly cas­es rock­et to more than 3,200 Sat­ur­day, most in Gaut­eng.

Strug­gling to ex­plain the sud­den rise in cas­es, sci­en­tists stud­ied virus sam­ples and dis­cov­ered the new vari­ant. Now, as many as 90% of the new cas­es in Gaut­eng are caused by it, ac­cord­ing to Tulio de Oliveira, di­rec­tor of the KwaZu­lu-Na­tal Re­search In­no­va­tion and Se­quenc­ing Plat­form.

 

WHY ARE SCI­EN­TISTS WOR­RIED ABOUT THIS NEW VARI­ANT?

 

Af­ter con­ven­ing a group of ex­perts to as­sess the da­ta, the WHO said that “pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence sug­gests an in­creased risk of re­in­fec­tion with this vari­ant,” as com­pared to oth­er vari­ants.

That means peo­ple who con­tract­ed COVID-19 and re­cov­ered could be sub­ject to catch­ing it again.

The vari­ant ap­pears to have a high num­ber of mu­ta­tions — about 30 — in the coro­n­avirus’ spike pro­tein, which could af­fect how eas­i­ly it spreads to peo­ple.

Sharon Pea­cock, who has led ge­net­ic se­quenc­ing of COVID-19 in Britain at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, said the da­ta so far sug­gest the new vari­ant has mu­ta­tions “con­sis­tent with en­hanced trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty,” but said that “the sig­nif­i­cance of many of the mu­ta­tions is still not known.”

Lawrence Young, a vi­rol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick, de­scribed omi­cron as “the most heav­i­ly mu­tat­ed ver­sion of the virus we have seen,” in­clud­ing po­ten­tial­ly wor­ry­ing changes nev­er be­fore seen all in the same virus.

 

WHAT’S KNOWN AND NOT KNOWN ABOUT THE VARI­ANT?

 

Sci­en­tists know that omi­cron is ge­net­i­cal­ly dis­tinct from pre­vi­ous vari­ants in­clud­ing the be­ta and delta vari­ants, but do not know if these ge­net­ic changes make it any more trans­mis­si­ble or dan­ger­ous. So far, there is no in­di­ca­tion the vari­ant caus­es more se­vere dis­ease.

It will like­ly take weeks to sort out if omi­cron is more in­fec­tious and if vac­cines are still ef­fec­tive against it.

Pe­ter Open­shaw, a pro­fes­sor of ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cine at Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don said it was “ex­treme­ly un­like­ly” that cur­rent vac­cines wouldn’t work, not­ing they are ef­fec­tive against nu­mer­ous oth­er vari­ants.

Even though some of the ge­net­ic changes in omi­cron ap­pear wor­ry­ing, it’s still un­clear if they will pose a pub­lic health threat. Some pre­vi­ous vari­ants, like the be­ta vari­ant, ini­tial­ly alarmed sci­en­tists but didn’t end up spread­ing very far.

“We don’t know if this new vari­ant could get a toe­hold in re­gions where delta is,” said Pea­cock of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. “The ju­ry is out on how well this vari­ant will do where there are oth­er vari­ants cir­cu­lat­ing.”

To date, delta is by far the most pre­dom­i­nant form of COVID-19, ac­count­ing for more than 99% of se­quences sub­mit­ted to the world’s biggest pub­lic data­base.

 

HOW DID THIS NEW VARI­ANT ARISE?

 

The coro­n­avirus mu­tates as it spreads and many new vari­ants, in­clud­ing those with wor­ry­ing ge­net­ic changes, of­ten just die out. Sci­en­tists mon­i­tor COVID-19 se­quences for mu­ta­tions that could make the dis­ease more trans­mis­si­ble or dead­ly, but they can­not de­ter­mine that sim­ply by look­ing at the virus.

Pea­cock said the vari­ant “may have evolved in some­one who was in­fect­ed but could then not clear the virus, giv­ing the virus the chance to ge­net­i­cal­ly evolve,” in a sce­nario sim­i­lar to how ex­perts think the al­pha vari­ant — which was first iden­ti­fied in Eng­land — al­so emerged, by mu­tat­ing in an im­mune-com­pro­mised per­son.

 

ARE THE TRAV­EL RE­STRIC­TIONS BE­ING IM­POSED BY SOME COUN­TRIES JUS­TI­FIED?

Maybe.

Is­rael is ban­ning for­eign­ers from en­ter­ing the coun­try and Mo­roc­co has stopped all in­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al air trav­el.

A num­ber of oth­er coun­tries are re­strict­ing flights in from south­ern Africa.

Giv­en the re­cent rapid rise in COVID-19 in South Africa, re­strict­ing trav­el from the re­gion is “pru­dent” and would buy au­thor­i­ties more time, said Neil Fer­gu­son, an in­fec­tious dis­eases ex­pert at Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don.

But the WHO not­ed that such re­stric­tions are of­ten lim­it­ed in their ef­fect and urged coun­tries to keep bor­ders open.

Jef­frey Bar­rett, di­rec­tor of COVID-19 Ge­net­ics at the Well­come Sanger In­sti­tute, thought that the ear­ly de­tec­tion of the new vari­ant could mean re­stric­tions tak­en now would have a big­ger im­pact than when the delta vari­ant first emerged.

“With delta, it took many, many weeks in­to In­dia’s ter­ri­ble wave be­fore it be­came clear what was go­ing on and delta had al­ready seed­ed it­self in many places in the world and it was too late to do any­thing about it,” he said. “We may be at an ear­li­er point with this new vari­ant so there may still be time to do some­thing about it.”

South Africa’s gov­ern­ment said the coun­try was be­ing treat­ed un­fair­ly be­cause it has ad­vanced ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing and could de­tect the vari­ant quick­er and asked oth­er coun­tries to re­con­sid­er the trav­el bans.

Dr. Mat­shidiso Moeti, WHO’s re­gion­al di­rec­tor for Africa, com­mend­ed South Africa and Botswana for quick­ly in­form­ing the world about the new vari­ant.

“With the omi­cron vari­ant now de­tect­ed in sev­er­al re­gions of the world, putting in place trav­el bans that tar­get Africa at­tacks glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty,” Moeti said. “COVID-19 con­stant­ly ex­ploits our di­vi­sions. We will on­ly get the bet­ter of the virus if we work to­geth­er for so­lu­tions.”

___

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press Health and Sci­ence De­part­ment re­ceives sup­port from the Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute’s De­part­ment of Sci­ence Ed­u­ca­tion. The AP is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for all con­tent.

COVID-19Health


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