A new coronavirus variant has emerged, its name is Omicron. Little is known about the new variant but some researchers have said that it is more dangerous than the delta variant.
Omicron is said to be more readily transmissible than delta variant.
I spent part of my evening yesterday following on the new Covid-19 variant – Omicron- which was identified by researchers in South Africa and Botswana.
Cases of Omicron have been discovered not only in South Africa but also in other countries such as United States of America, United Kingdom, Israel, Australia and Hong Kong.
The World Health Organization worked at breakneck speed and nicknamed the new variant as omicron – a Greek letter and went further and said that this is a variant of concern.
“Omicron’s very emergence is another reminder that although many of us might think we are done with COVID-19, it is not done with us,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said
Countries around the world slapped with travel bans to and fro South Africa and neighboring countries as a result of this new discovery of a new variant of Covid-19. African leaders were not amused with the travel bans as reported by npr.
We know that South Africa has had a spike in cases of Covid-19 going from less than 300 cases to 2,000 cases per day.
So far so good, we do not know where the omicron variant emerged from because cases have been reported in Europe with no connection to travel to Southern Africa.
South Africa was just one of the first countries to detect the new variant. This is credited to their robust disease surveillance programme. Not many countries can match that capacity of South Africa.
Researchers do not know how effective the existing vaccines will be against omicron.
It is not yet clear how omicron will compete with Delta variant.
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