While the scientists say there’s reason to be worried about this variant, they stress that there’s still a lot we don’t know – including whether the variant is actually more contagious, whether whether it causes more severe illness or its effects on vaccine effectiveness. it is in.
Epidemiologist Dr Abdul El-Sayed told CNN: “While this is worrying, as the WHO has pointed out, I think we have to step back and wait for the science on this.”
Here’s what we know about Omicron.
Where it has been identified
Variants have so far been identified in South Africa, Botswana, Hong Kong and Belgium.
A specimen from the first known variant case in South Africa was collected on November 9, the WHO said on Friday. Currently, the number of variant cases appears to be increasing in most of the country’s provinces, the WHO said. South Africa is currently only fully immunizing less than 36% of its adult population, and the proportion of people newly vaccinated has decreased in recent days, according to the country’s health ministry.
South African officials also initially said there was one confirmed case of a traveler from South Africa to Hong Kong. On Friday, Hong Kong health authorities identified a second case of this variant among returning travelers staying on the same floor of a designated quarantined hotel. Health authorities have ordered at least 12 people in nearby rooms to undergo mandatory Covid-19 testing and two weeks of isolation at a government center.
Also on Friday, the Belgian government said an individual who had recently traveled from Egypt and was unvaccinated had tested positive for the variant, marking the first case in Europe. Europe.
The European Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday, with an “increased immunity escape and transmissibility advantage over Delta,” there is a “high to very high” risk that It will spread in Europe.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Friday that there is “no indication” the variant is currently in the US, saying “it appears to have been limited,” but everything can happen.
Its mutations are raising concerns
Scientists are concerned that those mutations could make the variant more contagious and could lead to immune evasion.
Fauci told CNN on Friday scientists are working to find out if the variant can evade immunity, saying its mutations could help suggest or predict whether it whether it is true or not.
“What you need to do, is you need to take that particular virus sequence, put it in a form in the lab, where you can actually test for different antibodies, so you can predict that it can evade or you can actually prove it,” he said.
“Right now, you’re talking about a sort of red flag that this could be an issue, but we don’t know,” Fauci added. “Once you test it, you’ll know for sure if it’s evading the antibodies that we make, for example, against the virus through vaccines or … after you’ve been infected. .”
Dr Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, said he did not believe this variant would create a situation where “the vaccine would become useless.”
“I think that’s extremely unlikely,” he said. “The question is, will there be a small effect on the effectiveness of the vaccine or a large effect? I think we will probably get some preliminary data in the next few days.”
How does it compare to other variations
While mutations – and new variants – of the virus are expected as it continues to spread, experts say there is more reason to be concerned about Omicron.
“We’ve seen a lot of variations emerge over the last five or six months, and most of them aren’t much. This looks different,” says Jha. “It works differently, it seems like it’s much more contagious than even the Delta variant.”
When experts look at other variants, Jha says, it usually takes several months for those strains to prevail — in other words, the most common virus to spread in an area.
“This species became dominant very quickly in South Africa in the areas where it is found,” said Jha. “In days to weeks, not months.” “Right now, the number of cases in South Africa is pretty low, so it could be for other reasons, not just because it’s more contagious. But the speed at which it took off was really unlike anything else. we’ve seen before.”
WHO officials also said in Friday’s statement, preliminary evidence suggests that Omicron also poses a higher risk of reinfection than other variants of interest.
What are vaccine manufacturers saying?
In a news release on Friday, Moderna said it is rapidly working to test the vaccine’s ability to neutralize the variant and expects data to be available in the coming weeks.
The strain includes mutations “seen in the Delta variant that are thought to increase transmissibility and mutations seen in the Beta and Delta variants that are thought to promote immune escape,” Moderna said. . “The combination of mutations presents a significant potential risk for accelerating the decline in natural and vaccine-induced immunity.”
If vaccines and its current boosters aren’t enough to fight the variant, one possible solution is to push people to larger doses, Moderna says it’s testing. The company is also evaluating two multivalent enhancement candidates to see if they offer better protection against Omicron – both of which include some of the viral mutations present in the variant.
Moderna says it’s also testing an Omicron-specific booster.
“Within a few days, we moved as quickly as possible to execute on our strategy to address this variant,” said Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel in a press release.
AstraZeneca also said it was looking into the impact of Omicron on its vaccine, which is currently not approved for use in the US.
A company spokesperson said: “AstraZeneca is also conducting research in locations where the variant has been identified, specifically in Botswana and Eswatini, which will allow us to collect real data of Vaxzevria against this new virus variant”.
The company also said it is testing an antibody treatment, AZD7442, against this variant. AstraZeneca asked the US Food and Drug Administration in October for permission to use the emergency treatment.
Scientists at BioNTech, the German company that works with Pfizer to produce a Covid-19 vaccine, are also investigating the impact of this variant on their shot, with data expected within a few days. next week.
A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson told CNN in a statement that the company is also testing the effectiveness of the vaccine against Omicron.
It activates new travel measures
President Joe Biden said he would limit travel from South Africa and seven other countries starting Monday as a precautionary measure. Officials told CNN that the US travel restrictions would give the federal government more time to investigate the variant, but added that it was considered inevitable that the tension would eventually appeared in the United States.
European Union countries also agreed to introduce temporary restrictions on all travel into the EU from southern Africa over concerns about this variation, the bloc said on Friday. The countries involved are Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, said EU Commission spokesman Eric Mamer.
Canada will “ban the entry of foreign nationals … who have traveled through southern Africa in the past 14 days,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said on Friday.
And Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced travel restrictions covering most of Africa, saying on Friday, “we are on the brink of a state of emergency.”
CNN’s Virginia Langmaid, Sharon Braithwaite, Michael Nedelman, Frederik Pleitgen, Kaitlan Collins, Jonny Hallam and Naomi Thomas contributed to this report.
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