As nations severed air links from southern Africa amid fears of another global surge of the coronaviruses, scientists scrambled on Sunday to gather data on the new Omicron variant, its capabilities and how effectively the current vaccines will protect against it.
The findings are mixed. The variant may be more transmissible and better able to evade the body's immune responses than previous versions of the virus, experts said in interviews.
The vaccines may be needed to protect most people, but they may still be able to ward off illness and death. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the makers of the two most effective vaccines, are preparing to reformulate their shots if necessary.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle has an evolutionary biologist named Jesse who said that they need to be vigilant about the new variant.
We will have a better idea of how much this variant is spreading and how necessary it is to push forward with a variant vaccine in a few weeks.
Travel to and from southern Africa, where Omicron was first identified, was restricted even as scientists began scrutinizing the new variant. The virus has been found in a number of European countries, including the United Kingdom, as well as Australia, Israel and Hong Kong.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Sunday that Omicron accounts for most of the new daily cases in the province of Gauteng. In the past week, new infections have tripled and test positivity has increased.
The scientists have reacted quicker to Omicron. In 36 hours, researchers analyzed samples from 100 patients and gathered data to alert the world, according to a geneticist at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine.
Within an hour of the first alarm, scientists in South Africa rushed to test coronaviruses vaccines against the new variant. Dozens of teams worldwide, including researchers at Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, have joined the chase.
They will not know the results for two weeks. The vaccines most likely will be less effective than they were before, because of the Omicron mutations.
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The airport is in South Africa. Many countries restricted travel over the weekend.
Dr. Bloom said that the work done on other variations and other mutations made him confident that the drop in neutralization would be caused by the new variations.
Dr. Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said that people who have had a bout of Covid-19 are showing an increase in re-infections.
The vaccines train the body to recognize and attack the spike on Omicron's surface with more than 30 of the 50 mutations in it.
Some of these changes have been seen before. Some were thought to have powered the Beta variant's ability to sidestep vaccines.
The new variant combines both of those elements, according toPenny Moore, a virologist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa.
Omicron has 26 unique spike mutations, compared with 10 in Delta and six inBeta. The variant is likely to be more difficult for the immune system to detect.
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The coronaviruses have a variety of genes.
The New York Times has an interactive tracker for theronaviruses.
The areas of the spike that interact with the body's immune defenses are the ones that we know about, according to Dr. Moore.
The vaccines are being tested against Omicron by Dr. Moore and his team. She and her colleagues are going to test the blood of people who have been fully immunized.
It takes time to create a pseudoviruses that contains all of the genes, but results may be available in 10 days.
Alex Sigal, a researcher at the Africa Health Research Institute, is growing live Omicron, which will be tested against the blood of people who have been previously exposed to the disease.
The results should give a better picture of the vaccines performance.
If the vaccines are less effective against Omicron, they may need to be changed. Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson are preparing for the worst by testing an artificial version of Omicron against their vaccines.
Moderna's and Pfizer-BioNTech's were built with technology that should allow rapid modification. Pfizer can adapt the current vaccine within six weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days in the event of an escape variant, according to Jerica Pitts, a spokeswoman for Pfizer.
Moderna began work on Tuesday after its scientists learned of Omicron.
He said it was obvious that the variant would be a threat to vaccines.
The variant is a mix of all of the greatest hits. It just woke up our alarm bells.
He said that Moderna could update its vaccine in about two months and have results in about three months.
Booster shots will be tested to see if they will bolster the immune system enough to fight off the new variant. Boosters of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been shown to raise levels of the immune system.
According to a immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York, the antibodies may not be effective against every iteration of the virus.
People who recover from Covid and then receive a vaccine tend to produce a broader range of antibodies, capable of recognizing more versions of the virus, than people who are only vaccinations.
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Pfizer has a research and development facility. A revised version of the vaccine could be ready in six weeks.
It is clear that hybrid immunity, the kind that people get when they are both infectious and vaccine free, is superior, and that is very likely to take care of this thing, too.
We did not see that after two doses of vaccine. He said that they were hoping that after three doses, there would be some catching up.
Omicron will be tested against the vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. They hope to have results in a month.
It would be a miracle if Omicron-specific vaccines were created in a few weeks. Producing and distributing them raises a lot of questions.
If new versions are required to protect people everywhere, companies should make them available to African countries that can least afford them.
He said that South Africa had at least managed to procure their own vaccines. Low-cost options will be needed by poorer countries.
Pfizer didn't respond to a question about low-cost vaccines. Moderna had an agreement with the African Union to deliver over 100 million vaccine doses at $3.50 per half dose.
The number of people in Africa is less than 10 percent. He noted that they are the smallest of all manufacturers, and so 10 percent hopefully is useful.
Despite the frustration that South African scientists have expressed about vaccine inequity and punishing travel restrictions, they have been inundated with requests for genetic sequence of Omicron from Italy, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, as well as labs in North America.
The more teams involved, the better, said Dr. Moore, who received about 50 requests on Saturday. The virus is likely to change as it moves across the globe. She said that getting the right combination of genes is a moving target.
When the Beta variant surfaced, researchers made a mistake by drawing conclusions too early. Preliminary tests underestimated the variant's ability to evade the immune system, because only one known variant was taken into account. The variant turned out to be less infectious.
Scientists need to look at immune cells that can destroy Omicron to get a full picture of the effectiveness of the vaccine. Immune cells called T cells are crucial for preventing an infection from progressing to serious illness and death.
T cells may be more difficult to recognize parts of Omicron's variant because it occurs in parts of the virus targeted by T cells.
Wendy Burgers, an immunologist at the University of Cape Town, said that a computer simulation had predicted that some of the regions that T cells can recognize may be altered.
That may seem small. Some people may not be affected by Omicron because they have different sets of T cells.
Dr. Burgers is hoping to get blood from 50 people with the variant to see how it will affect a population. Results will be available after a week of very late nights and analysis, she said.
Even if the vaccines hold up against Omicron, new versions will probably be needed at some point. The virus is acquiring new genes much faster than expected.
Seasonal flu is an example of a virus that needs regular updates to its vaccines. The coronaviruses is at least comparable and possibly even faster than that. There will always be new variations.
Reporting from South Africa was contributed by Lynsey Chutel.
