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Friday, April 25, 2025

Infographic: How Omicron compares with other COVID variants

WHO says pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence in­di­cates an ‘in­creased risk of re­in­fec­tion with Omi­cron’ com­pared with oth­er coro­n­avirus vari­ants, but in­for­ma­tion is lim­it­ed.

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1242 days ago
20211129
(Al Jazeera)

(Al Jazeera)

By Mo­hammed Had­dad, AL JAZEERA

On No­vem­ber 24, 2021, sci­en­tists in South Africa re­port­ed a new coro­n­avirus vari­ant with a high­er num­ber of mu­ta­tions than were found in oth­er vari­ants. Two days lat­er, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) said the new vari­ant, dubbed Omi­cron, was a vari­ant of con­cern (VOC).

The an­nounce­ment led many coun­tries to im­pose trav­el re­stric­tions.

What are mu­ta­tions?

(Al Jazeera)

(Al Jazeera)

All virus­es mu­tate, and the SARS-CoV-2 coro­n­avirus has con­tin­ued to mu­tate since it emerged in late 2019. A mu­ta­tion is a change in a virus’s ge­net­ic code, and a mu­tat­ed virus is known as a vari­ant.

Some coro­n­avirus vari­ants spread more eas­i­ly than oth­ers, which can lead to in­creas­es in the rate of in­fec­tion. A surge in in­fec­tions can put ad­di­tion­al strain on health­care re­sources, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to more hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and deaths.

Ex­perts be­lieve there are at least 50 mu­ta­tions on the new vari­ant, with 32 mu­ta­tions on the spike pro­tein, the part of the virus that en­ters hu­man cells. Sci­en­tists have said that sim­i­lar mu­ta­tions seen in oth­er vari­ants have been as­so­ci­at­ed with high­er trans­mis­sion and a high­er chance of es­cap­ing the body’s im­mune de­fences, com­pared with the orig­i­nal strain of the virus.

Mu­ta­tions are iden­ti­fied by let­ters and num­bers such as D614G – which means an amino acid changed from a D (as­par­tate) to a G (glycine) at po­si­tion num­ber 614 of the vi­ral spike pro­teins.

How vari­ants are named

(Al Jazeera)

(Al Jazeera)

The WHO has iden­ti­fied five VOCs and eight vari­ants of in­ter­est (VOI). Since May 2021, they have been named af­ter the let­ters of the Greek al­pha­bet start­ing with Al­pha.

Ac­cord­ing to this, the next as­signed let­ters were sup­posed to be Nu then Xi but ac­cord­ing to the WHO, “Nu is too eas­i­ly con­found­ed with ‘new’ and Xi was not used be­cause it is a com­mon sur­name.”

In­stead, the 15th let­ter, Omi­cron, was used.

How Omi­cron com­pares with oth­er vari­ants

(Al Jazeera)

(Al Jazeera)

The WHO has said the glob­al risk of the Omi­cron vari­ant is “very high”.

Cur­rent­ly, the Delta vari­ant, first doc­u­ment­ed in In­dia in Oc­to­ber 2020, is the most dom­i­nant strain, ac­count­ing for more than 99 per­cent of glob­al se­quenced cas­es.

On Sun­day, the WHO said it is not yet clear whether Omi­cron is more trans­mis­si­ble or caus­es more se­vere dis­ease com­pared with oth­er vari­ants. It added that “vac­cines re­main crit­i­cal to re­duc­ing se­vere dis­ease and death”.

Pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence sug­gests there may be an “in­creased risk of re­in­fec­tion with Omi­cron as com­pared with oth­er vari­ants of con­cern, but in­for­ma­tion is lim­it­ed”, it said.

South African epi­demi­ol­o­gist Sal­im Ab­dool Karim said on Mon­day that not enough da­ta had been col­lect­ed to de­ter­mine the clin­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of Omi­cron com­pared with pre­vi­ous vari­ants, and that re­in­fec­tions were like­ly but that vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple had less prob­a­bil­i­ty of de­vel­op­ing se­ri­ous symp­toms.

Ex­perts say that more in­for­ma­tion will be avail­able in the com­ing days and weeks as the virus spreads more wide­ly and re­searchers study how Omi­cron’s mu­ta­tions work to­geth­er.

How to pro­tect your­self and oth­ers

(Al Jazeera)

(Al Jazeera)

The WHO ad­vis­es the fol­low­ing steps to pro­tect your­self and pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

1. Get vac­ci­nat­ed
2. Wear a mask
3. Main­tain phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing
4. Ven­ti­late in­door spaces
5. Keep good hy­giene
6. Self-iso­late if you de­vel­op symp­toms

COVID-19Health


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