The new Omicron variant could soon become the most common variant of COVID-19, but it's still unclear how harmful it is.
Omicron is likely to replace the Delta variant as the dominant strain in the world, according to the chair of global public health at Edinburgh University. She said it was a matter of weeks until we reached that point.
Dr. Jacob Lemieux told Global News Tuesday that it was still early days in determining whether Omicron will become dominant.
He said that the data is starting to trickle in and that Omicron is likely to beat Delta in many places.
The Omicron variant has a combination of 32 differentmutations in the part of the virus that attach to human cells. It's fast-spreading in South Africa and experts are racing to find out if it's more deadly or better at evading vaccines than the Delta variant.
The World Health Organization said in its latest COVID-19 update that Delta was picked up on nearly all of the lab tests.
According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Omicron was becoming dominant in South Africa.
Omicron's rapid spread in South Africa, which had low levels of Delta and a largely unvaccinated, young population, may not be replicated elsewhere.
Robin Colgrove, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told WCVB Monday that drawing comparisons with South Africa wouldn't help determine the path of the variant in the US due to differing conditions in the two countries. He said that vaccinations and transmissions are different.
Fauci said that there was an indication that Omicron was spreading in the community. Fauci said that the question for the US is what happens when Delta and Omicron compete.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be able to calculate if Omicron will become dominant in the US as a result of more COVID-19 cases.
Matthew Binnicker told Global News that the US would know in about two weeks if Omicron will replace Delta.
He said that it will be interesting to see what happens when more infections occur in older adults or people with underlying health conditions.
Fauci and other experts cautioned that the implications of Omicron becoming dominant are unclear and will remain so until more case data is available.
Fauci said in the Friday's briefing that it would take a while for them to know what the impact would be.
Paul Hunter, professor of medicine and specialist in medical microbiology, said on Monday that the big remaining question is how harmful it is if you get COVID-19 with this Omicron variant.
"That's the question we're struggling to answer at the moment," Hunter said.
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