The round blue objects are emerging from cells cultured in the lab. COVID-19 is caused by the virus that is known as SARS-coV-2.
The NIAID-RML is a science source.
Omicron is moving fast.
The percentage of cases caused by this new coronaviruses variant jumped 7 times in just a week in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a region that includes New York and New Jersey, it's causing about 13% of cases.
The risk of spreading the omicron variant to another member of a household is three times higher than with the delta variant, according to U.K. health officials. Delta is considered highly transmissible.
Why is omicron a superspreading variant?
The data published online Wednesday gives us the first look at how omicron likely behaves inside the respiratory tract, and the data offers a clue as to why this heavily-mutated variant is spreading so fast and even outcompeting delta.
Scientists at the University of Hong Kong report that the omicron variant is 70 times faster than the delta variant. 48 hours after the infection, the variant reaches higher levels in the tissue.
"That's amazing, I'm a fellow at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, and I wasn't involved in the study," says immunologist Wilfredo Garcia-Beltran. This finding shows that the process of entering or replicating inside the tissue has been sped up by the omicron changes.
He emphasizes that it is not known how this finding relates to viral loads inside a person's respiratory tract.
These findings from the University of Hong Kong have not been peer-reviewed. The research supports a study published online Tuesday that suggests omicron is more infectious than delta.
They found that the spike protein of omicron was better at helping the virus enter human cells than the original virus.
Omicron was more infectious than the original version of the virus, and more infectious than the wild type, according to a study.
The data shows that omicron may be able to cause less harm than the original variant. He cautions that the interpretation is very far out. "We think it will probably pan out that way, given that we're looking at a variant with more efficient entry into human cells."
Michael Chan Chi-wai and his colleagues took tissue from the human bronchi, the two large tubes in your respiratory tract that bring air to your lungs. The researchers were able to reproduce the particles of the virus. They used three different versions of the same virus.
The researchers looked to see how quickly each variant spread through the respiratory tissue. The tissue was already colonized by omicron at 70 times the level observed with the delta variant.
Chan and his colleagues ran experiments with lung tissue. The original version of the virus was more efficient at infecting cells than the omicron version.
The bronchia is more important than the lungs in this case. He's a researcher at the University of Lisbon.
The focus on the respiratory tract may suggest that omicron could cause less severe disease than the original version of the virus. Vedhoen is one of many scientists who say it's too soon to draw a conclusion.
If you don't have immunity, more infectious than Delta is not good. Vedlhoen adds. Without fast immunity, the virus can quickly spread from the bronchia to the lungs and other organs.
The infectious disease doctor at Trillium Health Partners agrees. A study shows that omicron is more transmissible than Delta. Interesting about less replication in the lungs. "Caution with overinterpretation."
Alejandro Balasz, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, says that respiratory tissue is far cry from living bronchi inside a person. The Hong Kong study looks interesting. You have to be careful about how you interpret studies outside of animals and humans.
He says that the isolated tissue doesn't have an immune response to fight the virus. The researchers only look at the virus's infections for 48 hours. He says that the experiment is happening in a very short period of time. We don't know if omicron is better at spreading diseases than lung tissue. What happens 72 hours later?
Scientists need to measure the viral loads inside people's respiratory tract. People with the original variant of the virus have less virus particles in their respiratory tracts.
He wants to see what the loads look like for omicron. The gold standard is samples from people who are actually infectious. That's where the action is.
