After almost two years of pandemic, a new variant of the virus that paralyzed the world, COVID-19, has recently been discovered. The new variant called Ómicron is the most contagious so far.
World Health Organization (WHO), issued a health alert in which it classified the global risk associated with the variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 Ómicron as “very high” given that its high number of mutations could also be the good news that the world is waiting to end the pandemic. He also declared that the travel ban will not prevent this new variant from spreading around the world, as reported by AFP.
Physicians in South Africa were the professionals who first detected and characterized the new variant. They observed in recent weeks that the strain is causing mild symptoms in new infections, such as headaches and tiredness. Very different from the difficulty to breathe and acute pictures of inflammation of tissues, registered in the previous versions of the virus. The Ómicron mutation has not caused a single hospitalization or death to date, they claim, as reported by Alberto News.
Professor Karl Lauterbach, a clinical epidemiologist who aspires to be Germany’s next health minister, said that “early reports mean that Ómicron could be a Christmas present and even hasten the end of the pandemic” and suggested that it has so many mutations , 32 only in the spike protein, twice that of Delta, which could mean that it is optimized to infect and be less lethal, in line with the evolution of most respiratory viruses.
The new variant of SARS-CoV-2, B.1.1.529, called omicron, was detected in the month of November between the 11th and 23rd in South Africa, in the province of Gauteng (77 cases), Botswana (4 cases ), Hong-Kong (one case). Then it has spread to other European countries, Japan, Canada and the US.
