The recent developments concerning one of the covid-19 variants have been marked as a ‘variant of concern”. Away from the Technical and scientific jargon let’s have the following keywords broken down.
Variants(Covid-19): Everyone knows covid-19, I mean who can forget such a media-hyped super epidemic that got the world sitting on its hand. But, the knowledge of a variant is not popular. They are classified into three types of variants.
As the Covid-19 virus enters into the human immune system, due to some spike in protein, it mutates and becomes somewhat more modified, not necessarily more harmful or dangerous. However, it shows some differences from its original(parent) virus.
Variance Of Interest(VOI): Variants of interest just means that the variants have succinct mutations and scientist around the world has pique interests, hence always on the lookout.
Variants of Concern(VOC): a variant becomes a VOC when there is verified evidence of an increase in transmissibility, possibly more severe disease than the parent virus. Examples of these classes of variants are;
Alpha (lineage B.1.1.7), Beta (lineage B.1.351), Gamma (lineage P.1), Delta (lineage B.1.617.2) and Omicron (lineage B.1.1.529).
Variant Of High Consequence(VOHC): this is a variant that has very high resistance to the parent virus vaccine, higher than other variants.
Some of the technical jargon used to label some of these variants may not really stick if you are not akin to science and laboratory.
The Current Effect
Omicron was first spotted and reported to the WHO by South Africa on November 24th 2021, several other cases have been reported after that by Canada, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Hong Kong, Czech, Spain and Portugal.
Travellers have been unexpectedly stranded due to the sudden regulations and restrictions in Johannesburg, caused by the omicron discovery.
Cancelled meetings, terminated flights, the discomfort of sleeping in a rented car in the airport, are all the effects of this sudden discovery as reported by some stranded travellers.
However, countries like Israel and Japan have taken countermeasures by restricting and placing travel bans. The Israeli government had shut off its borders following the discovery of the omicron.
The United States and some European countries have also placed specific travel bans on seven specific southern African nations as almost every reports links back to the immigrants of these countries.
Truths About Omicron
As panic surges, it is important to know that the omicron has not been proven to be more severe than its parent virus. It was only classed as a variant of concern.
Therefore should not be feared, however, measures to avoid the spread should be put in place with immediate effect.
Keeping the regular Covid-19 guidelines will keep everyone safe.
Further researches are also being carried out to ascertain the effect of the current vaccine on the omicron.
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