Understanding the global Omicron threat

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that preliminary evidence appears to indicate that vaccines may be less effective against infection and transmission linked to the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2, which also carries a “higher risk of re-infection”

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that preliminary evidence appears to indicate that vaccines may be less effective against infection and transmission linked to the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2, which also carries a “higher risk of re-infection”. According to data compiled by GISAID, a global science initiative that provides open-access to genomic data of influenza viruses, a total of 60 countries have so far submitted to it sequencing data that shows the presence of this highly mutated variant on their shores.

A man wears a face mask as he walks past an image of Santa Claus at a Christmas market, in London(AP)

To be sure, the Delta variant still easily remains the world’s most dominant variant, accounting for 97.9% of the nearly 3.17 million genome sequences uploaded in the four weeks ending December 13 to GISAID.

South Africa, however, is far from being the only that has seen a record spike at the same time that Omicron infections have seen a spike.

In London, the prevalence for Omicron cases (those with S-gene dropout) has been steadily rising. In the past week, 38.4% of all infections in the British capital have been Omicron cases.