"It’s not a panic, but it’s a concern." Three experts break down what we know about the new Omicron variant so far.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00It's almost like 30 mutations in one particular viral protein, which is a very unusual situation.
00:06I suddenly thought of Delta as peak variant and probably it couldn't get much worse than that.
00:11This looks potentially worse.
00:21Omicron is what the WHO has designated to be, has accumulated more than 30 mutations,
00:2826 of which are unique in the spike protein. It has not been observed in any other strains,
00:33Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta or something like that. So that's what actually is puzzling
00:37from the science perspective, that how did it accumulate so many mutations at once.
00:45The general age profile in South Africa appears to be, I mean from the
00:49press reports and all and not from the published literature,
00:53is more children who have it and not the elderly people.
00:57It could be more transmissible or, you know, it might have different kind of
01:06functional activity, which we don't know at this stage. It's not a panic, but it's a concern.
01:20Yesterday, I mapped out the mutations on the structure of spike to see how damaging I thought
01:25it was. And I certainly scared myself. So let's see. I suddenly thought of Delta as
01:34peak variant and probably it couldn't get much worse than that. This looks potentially worse.
01:44There's no reporting from South Africa yet that cases are more severe.
01:47And it looks like vaccines may still be doing something because we heard from there yesterday
01:52that the people in hospital tended to be the unvaccinated people rather than the vaccinated.