The new iteration of the coronaviruses has caused concern among scientists and public health officials because it has a high number of genes that could make it more transmissible and less susceptible to existing vaccines.
The World Health Organization has warned member states that the global risks posed by Omicron are very. There are cases in more than a dozen countries, including Britain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. Experts say it is only a matter of time before the variant shows up in the US.
Many countries have banned flights from southern Africa or barring entry of foreign travelers altogether, because of Omicron.
Public health experts have urged caution, noting that there is no evidence that Omicron is more dangerous than Delta, which quickly overtook its predecessors in the United States and other countries.
There is no evidence that Delta is more lethal or capable of outsmarting vaccines, despite some data suggesting it can cause more severe illness in the unvaccinated.
Omicron is not known if it is more transmissible and capable of causing more serious illness. There is evidence that the variant can cause more harm than good.
Omicron may cause only mild illness. South Africa has cases of young people who are less likely to become severely ill from Covid.
Most of the people hospitalized in South Africa were not fully immunized against the new variant of the disease, according to Dr. Coetzee, who chairs the South African Medical Association. Most patients she had seen had a slight cough, and did not lose their sense of smell or taste.
If the new variant spreads aggressively, the popular and widely beneficial monoclonal antibody drugs may need to be updated, as an indication that the Covid antibody treatment might be less effective against Omicron.
It may be a while before experts know if Omicron is more dangerous. New infections can take two weeks or more to develop.
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The Omicron variant has been reported in some countries.
The New York Times has an interactive tracker for theronaviruses.
Scientists expect to learn a lot in the coming weeks. At the moment, they don't think Omicron is impervious to existing vaccines, but they may turn out to be less protective.
There is another reason to remain calm, as vaccine makers have expressed confidence that they can modify existing formulas to make the shots more effective.
It is easy to identify Omicron with a lab test and a nasal swab.
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Staff members are at the arrivals information board. Israel, Japan, and Morocco are some of the countries that have banned flights from southern Africa.
There are new coronaviruses every now and then. Sometimes the virus can be given a leg up by being able to spread more easily among its human hosts or dodge the body's immune response.
Researchers in South Africa sounded the alarm because they found more than 30 changes in the spikeProtein, a component on the surface of the variant that allows it to bind to human cells and gain entry to the body. Some of the samples from Botswana have not previously been found in combination.
The immune system produces antibodies to fight a Covid-19 infection that targets the spike protein. Concerns have been raised that Omicron's spike might be able to evade the antibodies produced by previous infections or vaccinations.
The variant will reduce the efficacy of the treatments, a fear partly confirmed on Tuesday with the announcement of Regeneron.
It is worth remembering that the earlier variant that stirred concern, such as Mu andBeta, were poor at transmitting and never became a serious threat to the world.
Vaccines are expected to provide some protection against Omicron because they are stimulators of the immune cells that attack the virus. Most experts believe that the spikeProtein is instrumental in preventing serious illness and death.
Some health experts are promoting booster shots to increase immunity, because of the potential for waning immunity six months after vaccination.
Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson, makers of vaccines approved for use in the United States, all said they were studying Omicron, and they expressed confidence in their ability to tailor their formulations to target the variant.
The W.H.O. used the Greek alphabet to make it easier to describe the coronaviruses. The first variant of concern was identified in Britain in late 2020.
The system has skipped the next two letters in the alphabetical order: Nu and Xi, which may have been noticed by veterans of American society.
The next letter, Xi, is a bit more complicated than Nu, so officials thought Nu would be easy to misunderstand. W.H.O. officials said that it was a common last name. It is also the name of China's top leader.
A spokesman for the W.H.O. said the organization's policy was designed to avoid offending any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups.
Next in line? Omicron. Here is how it is pronounced.
The rise of another worrisome variant in the developing world points to a more fundamental problem facing the global community more than a year and a half into the epidemic.
Poorer nations struggle to obtain vaccines while wealthy ones keep them, giving more opportunities for the emergence of the disease. There are more chances for the virus to become more lethal.
A dangerous new variant of Delta is unlikely to stay in one place for very long.
There are risks beyond public health. A new variant can cause economic devastation in affluent countries that are just as bad as those in the developing world. Billions of dollars are lost to wealthy countries when residents of poorer countries are unvaccinated.
Africans are angry because of the travel restrictions caused by Omicron, which they believe is a symptom of Western policies that have failed to deliver vaccines and the resources needed to administer them.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the W.H.O., described the travel bans as unfair. He said that he understood the concern of all countries to protect their citizens against a variant that we don't yet fully understand.
Several member states are introducing blunt, blanket measures that are not evidence-based or effective on their own, and which will only worsen inequalities.
