And the world is scared again by the power of the virus that invaded the planet at the end of 2019 and caused a pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 has another variant that has already been classified as “alarming” by the World Health Organization (WHO) and already has a name: Omicron. The new variant was announced to the world by the South African authorities on Thursday 25th, after it was first identified on November 9th.
As soon as they presented it, South African experts raised concerns about its transmissibility and resistance to vaccines, and 24 hours later, WHO did not hesitate to call it “alarming” based on preliminary data suggesting “increased risk of reinfection” compared to other existing options. such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.
Just yesterday, 27 EU member states also agreed to apply an emergency brake, resulting in the suspension of flights from seven South African countries to public space, namely Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Swatini, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
The information, which was published during the Slovenian presidency via Twitter, said that member states, European institutions and experts “agreed on the need to activate the emergency braking mechanism and impose time limits on all travel to the EU from here. South Africa. “The communiqué also called on member countries to” screen and quarantine all passengers from these countries. “
According to the WHO, the first infection was detected in a person on November 9 in South Africa and is spreading “at an increasingly rapid rate” in that country and in other provinces in southern Africa. So far, the studies carried out for B.1.1.529 show that it is not the Delta sub-line, which is predominant in the world and which is characterized by a large mutational capacity. In other words, he has already produced “several mutations, and some of them are troubling,” he refers to information provided by the WHO, claiming that “the preliminary data collected indicate an increased risk of reinfection.”
Until yesterday, the Ricardo Jorge National Institute of Health (INSA) has not identified a single case of this new variant in the national territory, citing “to be be attentive to the situation by maintaining its ongoing national variation monitoring program. “In response to DN, INSA also explained that a new version of the B.1.1.529 line was recently discovered in South Africa, believing that – if this is the reason for the increase cases of infection registered in a given country.
The Portuguese Institute also confirmed that the strain of this variant was characterized by “an abnormally large number of mutations in the Spike protein, many of which had already been identified separately in other variants and which were believed to be associated with greater transmissibility. and / or an inability to bind antibodies “.
However, he stressed that “there is still no evidence to indicate that this new strain is more transmissible or that it could lead to problems in terms of vaccine efficacy. In fact, the simultaneous appearance of several corresponding mutations did not always have phenotypic consequences, given that they are often, the disappearance of these strains from the epidemiological panorama is observed shortly after their appearance. “
The WHO also confirmed in its announcement yesterday that there is still insufficient scientific evidence to demonstrate that the world is again faced with a variant with a higher degree of transmissibility than the Delta variant identified in India and still considered so. which have achieved a higher transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2.
Infectious disease specialist Margarida Tavares of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário São João in Porto, an infectious disease specialist, explained to DN that “although we do not know how transmitted this variant is, we cannot predict the impact it might have on the pandemic.” arguing that in these almost two years of the pandemic, there were already other mutations that were identified as very dangerous, but which later turned out to be different.
UK says most significant variant has been found so far after Delta
As for Omicron, there is no doubt that within 24 hours he forced the international authorities to meet urgently: WHO in Geneva, EU in Brussels. A warning has been issued, and as Jenny Harris of the United Kingdom’s Health Safety Agency also said yesterday, “This is the most significant variant we have found so far,” and there is a need for “urgent investigation to find out more about its transmissibility. the severity and susceptibility to the vaccine. “
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has already said that it is too early to make predictions about the possible need to adapt existing vaccines to this option. As for laboratories, for example, Pfizer and BioNTech have already announced that they will receive results within two weeks at the latest on whether the vaccines will need to be adapted to the new variant.
Once again, SARS-CoV-2 is driving scientific research to find answers in record time. Recall that on Thursday, the WHO expert group responsible for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 met with South African experts to jointly analyze the latest available data on this option. One of the problems was precisely his ability to change.
Early in the morning, the head of the COVID-19 department at WHO, Maria Van Kerkhov, suggested that “little is known about this option.” “What we really know is that he has a very large number of mutations. And the concern is that when there are so many mutations, it could affect the behavior of the virus, ”he said.
At the beginning of yesterday, countries such as Germany, Japan, Austria, Italy and Singapore, as well as the United Kingdom, suspended flights from seven South African countries to their territory. And the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, expressed deep concern: “We are very serious about the news of a new highly mutated version.”
The EU president even called on states to “force travelers returning from the region to comply with strict quarantine rules” and comply with personal protective measures.
