A new variant of Coronavirus has been identified in South Africa and the World Health Organisation has named it the Greek name ‘Omicron’, while labelling it a variant of concern due to its large number of mutations and possible faster rate of infection.
According to reports from WHO on Friday, a preliminary evidence also suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant of concern, as compared to other strains, such as Delta.
WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, reportedly stated that the information about the new ‘Omicron’ variant is still limited.
According to her, “There are fewer than 100 whole genome sequences that are available, we don’t know very much about this yet.”
She added that, “What we do know is that this variant has a large number of mutations, and the concern is that when you have so many mutations it can have an impact on how the virus behaves.”
She made it known that, “It will take a few weeks for us to understand what impact this variant has, there’s a lot of work that is underway.”
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