Damascus-SANA
The new mutated “Omicron” from the Corona virus raised a new state of panic and alertness in the world with its spread around the world and its arrival to the American continent, with several countries declaring preparedness again and returning to procedures for closing borders, suspending flights, and tightening health measures.
The mutated Omicron continues to spread rapidly in many countries, including France, which announced yesterday that it had monitored eight possible cases of the new strain of Corona and Canada, which confirmed the first two cases of it on its soil, to begin a series of countries that announced the registration of mutant infections in succession, amid confusion to restore strict procedures, travel restrictions and closures Borders and the imposition of quarantine on arrivals from South African countries.
Last Friday, the World Health Organization identified the B1 1 529 strain that was discovered in Botswana and South Africa as a source of concern and named it Omicron, which contains 43 mutations, while the Delta had 18 mutations found mainly in the part that interacts with human cells, meaning that it It adapts to humans.
The organization also called yesterday for an international agreement to help prevent and combat epidemics in the future, against the backdrop of the emergence of “Omicron” that prompted the world to isolate the brown continent at a time when the countries of the world tighten their measures to confront the mutated by the ban on flights and closing the borders to travelers coming from the southern African region despite The World Health Organization warns against imposing travel restrictions.
Experts and scientists were quick to determine the danger of the new strain, Omicron, especially to see if it could circumvent the existing vaccines.
According to epidemiologists, it may be too late to impose travel restrictions to stop the spread of Omicron, but many countries continue to take these measures, while the chief medical advisor to US President Anthony Fauci announced that the United States is on high alert in preparation for the new Corona mutator.
Omicron has strengthened the race between major international companies to produce an anti-vaccine, as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson announced that they, like their competitor Moderna, have begun working on developing a new version of their anti-Coronavirus vaccine targeting the new mutator in the event that their vaccine is not effective in protecting against this new version of the virus. .
Experts expected new mutations and new mutagens with the continued spread of the Corona virus, as Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, USA, said, "We have seen a lot of mutagens appearing during the past five or six months, and most of them did not reach the level of this mutant that looks different."
And geneticists in South Africa showed last week that the omicron mutant contains an unusually large number of mutations, with more than 30 mutations in the virus's barb protein, the structure the virus uses to reach the cells it attacks.
It usually takes several months for these strains of viruses to become dominant and most prevalent in one region, but this new mutant has become dominant very quickly in South Africa, so that Omicron is a reminder that Corona is still controlling the world.
Reem Abu Turabi