“The world should provide support to South Africa and Africa and not discriminate or isolate it!” tweeted Tulio De Oliveira, director of South Africa’s Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation, calling on philanthropists to help. “By protecting its poor and oppressed population we will protect the world,” De Oliveira wrote.
“Those mutations are worrisome,” said Albert Ko, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, who said they may compromise treatments known as monoclonal antibodies. “That’s the proof that has to be done,” said Ko, who pointed out that multiple mutations can also cripple a virus, making it less fit.
“Not all mutations are good for the virus,” Ko said.
Massimo Ciccozzi, head of the molecular epidemiology unit at the Rome-based University Campus Bio-Medico, described omicron as “a greatest hits compilation of all mutations from other variants, within one lineage.”
Ciccozzi, who speculated that the package of mutations may be due to long-term treatment of a single immunocompromised patient, noted one bright spot. Unlike delta, omicron is detectable through the normal procedures used with other variants.
“The molecular test detects it,” Ciccozzi said. “Which is very important because it just won’t go unnoticed.”
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