New Covid variant named Omicron by WHO
well as we've been hearing the worldhealth organization tonight's class thislatest mutation is a variant of concerngiving it the name omicron let's speaknow to dr catherine smallwood she'ssenior emergency officer and kobe 19incident manager at the who uh drsmallwood thank you very muchfrom the information that the who hasput out tonightthe first specimen was found on the 9thof november what work has been going onsince then to try and find out moreabout this variantgood evening and as you say it's only acouple of weeks ago that uhthat this variant really emerged on thepicture and uh and since thenum it was only actually a few days agothat it was first umput on the open access sequenceplatforms thatviruses are virus sequences they use areshared with and for scientists to lookat so it's really this week that um thishas really come to our attention at theinternational level and there's a lot ofwork already going on a lot ofinformation being shared um especiallyfrom our south african colleagues andand i think that is something that wereally have to recognize the opennessthe transparency andand the meaningfulness of sharing thisinformation will have a global umimplication capturing australia has beenimportant as all countries have foundand and some have learned this to theircost when perhaps certain countries havenot been as open about information notjust of new variants but for instancecase numbers and then in the end they'vepaid a heavy price sometimes for notbeing but also in this case sometimeswe're being very candid in terms of theinformation that's been supplied there'sthere's what are the concerns about thisphone what is it that's making people gohang on a minute because there have beenlots of mini variations why is this badenough to be given its own name and forpeople to be so anxious aboutthat's rightit's particularly worryingbecause based on its mutation profile itlooks quite differentand significantly different it has 32mutations around the spike proteins sothat's the area of the virus that isreally important in the way it transmitsandenters ourcells when it when it when it infects usand uh and some of these mutations weknow about because we've seen them inother variants but other mutations aretotally new and it's thisconstellation of mutations that we don'treally understand very well yet sothat's why it's of particular concern atthe moment andof course we're also looking at thetransmissionpatterns in south africa where it hasseemed todisplace um the delta variant which isor had been um dominant in all of thecountry yes right right case arises casenumbers rising i see from the whoinformation in all the provinces in insouth africathe who also says there is preliminaryevidence of an increased risk ofre-infection so is that of people who'vealready had covetyes that would be andand that's basically because some ofthose mutationsare mutations that are associated withimmune escape so that might mean peoplewho have previously had covet 19 and itmight also meanthat we don't know this for sure yetthat there may be a decrease in theeffectiveness of the vaccine that's notto say the vaccines won't be effectiveat all but there may be a decrease asdelta schlora decreased from alpha forexample dr catherine smallwood from theworld health organization um the senioremergencies officer and co-midnightinginstant manager there thank you so muchfor being with us in copenhagen tonightyou're welcome good night good night
Post a Comment