What We Know About the Omicron Variant

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The story of the Omicron variant began a week ago, when researchers in southern Africa detected a version of the coronavirus that carried 50 mutations. When scientists look at coronavirus mutations, they worry about three things: Is the new variant more contagious? Is it going to cause people to get sicker? And how will the vaccines work against it? We explore when we will get the answers to these three questions, and look at the discovery of the variant and the international response to it. Guest: Apoorva Mandavilli, a reporter covering science and global health for The New York Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is a daily.
0:07.0	Today, the World Health Organization has declared that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus
0:19.0	poses a quote, very high risk to public health.
0:24.0	I spoke with my colleague, Opoorva Mondavili, about how it is that scientists came to that conclusion so quickly.
0:44.0	It's Tuesday, November 30th.
0:49.0	I think we're ready. When you're ready to record, we're ready to record.
0:55.0	We got an email about pronunciation. Is it Omicron or Omicron?
1:02.0	I've been saying Omicron. It's like somewhere in between.
1:07.0	It's neither on nor on.
1:09.0	Omicron. It's kind of like Omicron, but it's not Omicron.
1:14.0	It's like Omicron.
1:17.0	When you just say it really slowly so we all can get on the same page.
1:20.0	Omicron.
1:22.0	Not Omicron.
1:24.0	I mean, I don't think it really matters that much honestly.
1:27.0	I'm going with Omicron.
1:29.0	Is that okay?
1:30.0	Omicron. Omicron.
1:34.0	Okay. At this point, Opoorva, I'm curious what named variant are we on now in terms of numbers?
1:41.0	What number is this?
1:42.0	We've probably seen thousands and thousands of variants of the virus, but in terms of ones that have been important enough or of concern enough to get a Greek letter, this is seven.
1:53.0	And if you want to think about the ones that the World Health Organization said are really serious, variance of concern as the WHO calls them, this is number five.
	...

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