The omicron variant of Covid-19 has given scientists a taste of what’s to come in the coming months, as global jitters, travel bans, and rethinking vacation plans are triggered by fears of another global surge in Covid-19 cases.
Despite the new variant’s mutations, it is unlikely to cause more severe illness than previous coronaviruses, despite the fact that it may be able to evade vaccine protection to some extent.
Real-world evidence from South Africa indicates that these preliminary hypotheses are correct. Infections have occurred in vaccinated and previously ill people, but they have been mild so far. Much of the current evidence is based on computer simulations, aside from computer modelling and comparisons to previous omicron variants.
Omicron has more than twice as many mutations as the delta variant, with the majority of them found in the spike, the crown-like protein on the virus’s surface that vaccines train our bodies to attack. There is still a lot to discover about omicron. Scientists were surprised two years into the pandemic to discover that an ultra-contagious delta variant of the virus was still circulating, despite predictions that the pandemic would peak before dying out, similar to the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Omicron’s mutations will require weeks of careful laboratory testing and study for scientists to determine exactly what they mean, as well as definitive details about how much more contagious it is and the implications for those who are infected. Scientists, on the other hand, have been able to make educated guesses based on early observations.
Two things are suggested by the location of omicron’s mutations. The first is that the virus has a high chance of evading vaccines. Some of the spike mutations’ locations are similar to those of other rapidly spreading variants. When those mutations occurred, the virus was able to avoid being attacked by vaccines or previous Covid-19 infections, resulting in antibody-escape.
T-cells appear to be the body’s second line of defence, and omicron appears to be vulnerable to them. Antibodies collaborate with them to prevent the spread of infection and disease. When a virus evades antibody attacks and kills infected cells, T-cells are activated.
The spike of this protein contains numerous hotspots that have been linked to its ability to bind antibodies.”
According to Wendy Burgers, an immunologist at the University of Cape Town, a large portion of the T-cell response is expected to remain active against omicron.
Her lab is currently awaiting samples from omicron-infected patients as well as spike-protein based on omicron in order to begin experiments to confirm this theory. Early computer analysis, however, has supported the hypothesis.
Antibodies target the spike protein’s receptor binding domain as well as its N-terminal domain. A few mutations in these regions can have a significant impact on the ability of antibodies to attack.
T-cells, on the other hand, attack the entire spike. A few tweaks won’t make much of a difference in their effectiveness.
We need to figure out how much the T-cell response is affected in the lab.” She put it this way:
Many of the dozens of mutations found in omicron have never been seen in any other variant. That means it will take more time and data to fully comprehend omicron’s impact.
For the past year, the Rockefeller University lab in New York has been experimenting with a non-dangerous, synthetic version of the virus to see what would happen if significant numbers of mutations were made to the Covid-19 spike protein, many of which are in the same locations as omicron.
‘We can be fairly certain that this new spike will be resistant to antibody neutralisation,’ she says. In the face of this omicron spike, we can only hope that the vaccines will still provide some protection against severe disease.
Finally, these mutations show how difficult it is to predict the pandemic’s path.
Omicron was first sequenced at UCSF by microbiologist Charles Chiu, who said he was one of the scientists who thought its delta variant signalled the end of the pandemic.
He was taken aback by his reaction to Micron. “This virus never ceases to amaze us,” Winston Churchill once said.
Even if omicron does not cause more severe infections in most people, the sheer number of infections would result in more hospitalizations and deaths, he said. As long as there are a large number of unvaccinated people on the planet, the virus will continue to spread and mutate.
Omicron provides another example of how SARS-CoV-2 may be difficult to eradicate. According to Chiu, the focus of public health policy should be on preventing serious disease rather than attempting to eradicate the virus through vaccination.
He predicted that the virus would be around for a while.
