Scientists sharing Omicron data were heroic. Let ’s ensure they don’t regret it | Jeffrey Barrett

The teams in Africa who detected the new Covid genome moved quickly. Their actions should not result in economic loss•Coronavirus – latest updates•See all our coronavirus coverageOne of the positive experiences during two years of pandemic gloom has been the speed of scientific progress in understanding and treating Covid. Many effective vaccines were launched in less than a year and rapid large-scale trials found a cheap and effective drug, dexamethasone, thatsaved thousands of lives.The global scientific community has also carried out “genomic surveillance” – sequencing the genome of the virus to track how it evolves and spreads at an unprecedented level: the public genome database has more than 5.5m genomes. The great value of that genomic surveillance, underpinned by a commitment to rapid and open sharing of the data by a ll countries in near-real time, has been seen in the last few days as we’ve learned of the Covid variant calledOmicron.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Coronavirus Science Infectious diseases World news Africa Epidemics World Health Organization Society Travel Source Type: news