The World Health Organization has classified a new variant first identified in southern Africa as a variant of concern. The WHO added the new discovery to the list of variants of concern, giving it the name omicron, in a statement released Friday. Members of the organization convened for an emergency meeting on Friday to assess the seriousness of the new variant, B. 529, which was found to carry a high number of mutations, caused global concern.
The WHO said that the number of cases of the variant appeared to be rising in almost all provinces in South Africa. It said the variant had been detected at faster rates than previous surges in infection, suggesting that this variant may have a growth advantage. Within a few days of the new variant being identified, governments in Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel have identified cases of the new variant, with the latter finding at least one case in a traveler returning from Malawi, while two others with suspected cases had been placed in isolation.
As the alarm grows over the variant's spread, a number of countries have rolled out new travel restrictions, including the U.S.
You can see that Belgium has already had a case, Hong Kong. If we're detecting those cases with our limited amount of virus sequencing we're doing around the world, you've got to know that this virus is already in a number of countries, according to Osterholm.
At best, trying to contain this virus to southern Africa right now is like trying to contain the wind, he said.
Osterholm said it was still too soon to say what the impact of the new variant might be.
A clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University in London in the U.K., Deepti Gurdasani agreed. She said that while there was still much to learn about the new variant, she was alarmed to see how quickly it has spread in southern Africa over the past two weeks.
She said it was seriously, seriously concerning. The epidemiologist said she would prefer to see countries overreact and scale back on the new development than under-react to it.
On Friday, shortly after WHO announced it had classified omicron as a variant of concern, the U.S. said it would restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries starting Monday.
Senior administration officials said they were taking the decision out of an abundance of caution and after receiving advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
Earlier in the day, Fauci said there was no indication that the variant had already reached the U.S. He said it was possible.
He said that it was something that we are learning more and more about in real time.
The British government added six African countries — South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, and Namibia — to its red list, which will require those arriving from those countries to be quarantined for 10 days at a government-approved hotel.
Israel, Japan, Singapore and a number of European countries have announced new travel restrictions, while the European Union executive has recommended a suspension of air travel from affected countries.
In the U.K. Gurdasani said that she was personally in favor of a quarantine mandate for all arrivals, regardless of where they were traveling, and enforcing Covid testing at the border until we know more about the new variant.
She said that we had made a lot of mistakes before. With delta, I think a lot of countries were slow to act. Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said he understood why countries have been quick to react to the rise of the new variant.
After some nations saw a slow response to the delta variant, he said, we must learn how to react better the second and third time. He stressed that the uncertainty surrounding the new variant is the most worrying, with the variant having mutations that we haven't seen before. He said we're not sure how scary it is.
Osterholm said that the identification of a new variant should not be a surprise to anyone.
He said that the future course of the pandemic was going to be decided by two different factors.
He said that the immunity to the virus gained from Covid vaccinations and past infections would wane over time. He said that the second possibility is whether a new variant might develop that could be more infectious, more likely to cause severe disease or able to evade immunity from vaccines or previous infection. In countries with high vaccination rates, we are seeing the first question answered in real-time with waning vaccine efficacy, partly due to recent surges in Covid cases.
It is still to be determined what impact omicron might have.
Osterholm said that there was no reason that Delta was the last king of the variants.