The WHO said that it appeared Omicron might pose an increased risk of reinfecting people who had already had COVID-19, but “information is limited.” Crucial questions remain unanswered, including whether the variant is more transmissible, whether it causes more severe disease, and what its impact is on “existing countermeasures” such as vaccines, according to a statement released Sunday by the World Health Organization. Scientists are working feverishly to determine exactly how the mutations may have changed the virus.
It looks worrisome,” he said, and “already seems like it will be functionally different.” it kind of comes out of nowhere, perhaps from an immunocompromised individual, and shows up with 30 mutations in the spike protein,” Bedford said. That’s largely what’s given them their advantageous phenotype. have maybe eight mutations, maybe 10, in the spike protein. “So other things that have been circulating - Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc.
Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a recent winner of a MacArthur “genius grant,” said in a virtual event held Tuesday that the number of mutations in the spike protein that allows the virus to penetrate cells is “kind of wild.” “This variant did surprise us - it has a big jump in evolution, many more mutations than we expected, especially after a very severe third wave of Delta.” The Delta variant currently accounts for nearly 100 percent of cases in the US and continues to cause illness and death at a high rate. Omicron has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” Tulio de Oliveira, director of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform, said last week. Scientists say Omicron has an unusual number of mutations and they are concerned that those could spell trouble, worsening a pandemic that has already wracked the world.