Omicron ’s full impact will be felt in countries where fewer are vaccinated

Analysis: the new coronavirus variant seems highly transmissible, but the big question is whether it causes severe disease. Either way, poorer nations will be hit hardestCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageIn early August Gideon Schreiber and a team of virologists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel began playing around with the spike protein of the Sars-CoV-2 virus – the protein that allows the virus to enter our cells – to see if they could predict future mutations that could yield dangerous new variants of Covid-19.At the time, Schreiber noted with concern that there were a variety of ways in which the spike protein could evolve. If all of these mutations occurred at once, it could yield a variant that was both extremely transmissible and potentially capable of evading some of the body ’s immune defences, blunting the efficacy of the vaccines.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Coronavirus Infectious diseases Medical research Microbiology Science World news South Africa Source Type: news