WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE OMICRON VARIANT AS THE ANXIETY OF IT SPREAD GRIP THE WORLD
There was lots of potential for Omicron to have made its way to Europe before more severe restrictions were imposed this weekend. Will Omicron be more or less virulent than the Delta variant?
How should the world respond to Omicron? The admirable work of South Africa’s scientists and their exemplary openness bought the world time.
When news emerged on November 25th in South Africa of a worrying new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, many countries banned travel from countries in southern Africa within a day.
Omicron has roughly 30 mutations on the spike protein, some of which may help virus particles enter human cells and others of which could frustrate attacks from antibodies.
Covid-19 cases have been rising fastest over the past seven days in Sub-Saharan Africa. Find out how our data team is tracking covid-19 across the African continent
Even if Omicron comes to dominate in South Africa, it is unclear that it will displace Delta in other parts of the world. Officially, Africa's death toll from covid-19 is pegged at 222k. But othee model suggests the true death toll is between 880k to 2.6m.
Western Europe has recently imposed restrictions to deal with winter outbreaks of covid-19's Delta variant. Omicron could mean normalcy is yet further away.
Will Omicron be more or less virulent than the Delta variant, which is causing 2.5m cases a week in Europe alone?
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