Since South Africa's announcement on Thursday of the discovery of a worrying new variant, panic has spread around the world like wildfire.
The World Health Organization classified it Thursday as
"worrying"
and gave it its official name: the Greek letter Omicron.
The newcomer has cause for concern: an unusual accumulation of mutations that can both reduce the effectiveness of our immune defenses and increase its contagiousness.
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Covid-19: B.1.1.529, this disturbing variant identified in South Africa
South Africa very quickly sounded the alert, just 36 hours after the identification of the first alarming signs: a skyrocketing Covid cases among young people in the Gauteng region (North).
A sequencing campaign quickly confirmed the presence of a new variant.
A few cases have been identified in Botswana, a traveler returning from South Africa exported the new virus to Hong Kong, Israel announced that it had identified three cases on its soil (including one returning from Malawi) and Belgium, a woman
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