A nurse prepares the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for children for distribution in Montreal, Quebec, on November 24, 2021.
ANDREJ IVANOV | AFP | Getty Images
The World Health Organization assigned the Greek letter omicron to a newly identified variant of Covid in South Africa on Friday.
The UN health authority recognized the strain, initially designated as line B.1.1.529, as a worrying variant.
Health professionals are deeply concerned about the portability of the Omicron variant because it has an unusual mutation constellation and a different profile than other worrying variants.
“Omicron, B.1.1.529, is mentioned as a variant of concern because it has some questionable properties,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical director for Covid-19, in a video published on Twitter. “This variant has a large number of mutations, and some of those mutations have some worrying properties.”
Experts fear that the sharp rise in Covid cases in South Africa’s Gauteng province – where the strongly mutated strain of the virus was first identified – could mean it has greater potential than other variants to escape earlier immunity. The number of Omicron cases “appears to be increasing in almost all provinces of South Africa,” the WHO reported.
The organization only designates strains of Covid as worrying variants if they are more transmissible, more virulent, or better suited to evading public health measures, including vaccines and therapeutics. Data presented at a Thursday briefing hosted by the South African Department of Health suggests that some of Omicron’s mutations are linked to improved antibody resistance, which could reduce the protection offered by vaccines.
Certain mutations could also make Omicron more contagious while others have not yet been reported, preventing researchers from understanding how they could affect the strain’s behavior, according to a presentation at the briefing.
“Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant compared to other VOCs,” said the WHO in a statement released on Friday.
The identification of a new worrying variant, coupled with mounting concerns from health officials, left global markets in a tailspin on Friday. Oil prices and travel and leisure stocks took heavy losses on the news.
The WHO has announced that it will take weeks to understand how the variant can affect diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.
What do we know so far?
South African scientist Tulio de Oliveira said in a media briefing on Thursday that the Omicron variant contains around 50 mutations, but more than 30 of them in the spike protein, the region of the protein that interacts with human cells before entering cells.
In addition, the receptor binding domain – the part of the virus that comes into contact with our cells first – has 10 mutations, far more than just two for the Delta-Covid variant, which spread rapidly earlier this year and became the dominant strain worldwide .
This level of mutation means that it most likely came from a single patient who was unable to get rid of the virus, which gives them a chance to develop genetically. The same hypothesis was made for the Covid variant Alpha.
“In South Africa and other countries, a lot of work is being done to better characterize the variant itself in terms of transferability, severity and impact on our countermeasures such as the use of diagnostics, therapeutics or vaccines,” said Van. said Kerchowe. “So far there is little information, but these studies are ongoing.”
About 100 variants of omicron genomes have been identified in South Africa, mainly in Gauteng Province. The variant has also been detected in Israel, Botswana and Hong Kong.
Many of the mutations identified in the Omicron variant are linked to increased antibody resistance, which can reduce vaccine effectiveness and affect the virus’ behavior with regard to vaccination, treatments, and communicability, health officials said.
Passengers wait at Frankfurt Airport.
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“There are two approaches to what happens next: wait for more scientific evidence or act now and row back later if it wasn’t necessary,” said Sharon Peacock, professor of public health and microbiology at the University of Cambridge.
“I believe that it is better to ‘go hard, go early and go fast’ and apologize when we go wrong than take the academic view that we need to reach a tipping point in the evidence before action is taken Rapid spread in South Africa “could be due to super-spreader events or other factors. But there are enough red flags to assume the worst instead of hoping for the best – and take a precautionary approach, “Peacock said.
The European Union, UK, Israel, Singapore and the US are among the countries that impose travel restrictions on South African countries.
WHO has warned countries against rushing to impose travel restrictions, saying they should take a “risk-based scientific approach” instead.
The South African State Department said Friday morning that the UK’s decision to take precautionary measures “appears to be seemingly hasty as even the WHO has yet to deliberate on next steps”.
– CNBC’s Elliot Smith contributed to this report.
