“A much bigger threat than Delta”

Berlin Not much time has passed since vigilant researchers in South Africa and Botswana discovered a new, extraordinarily strongly mutated Sars-CoV-2 variant at the end of November and warned the world about its possible rapid spread.

Although since then scientists around the world have been hurrying to find out more about Omikron, as the World Health Organization (WHO) has now called the variant, a few days and weeks will pass before the current estimates based on preliminary information become certainties based on experimental and epidemiological data.

Nevertheless, researchers have now found out a lot about Omikron – albeit little good.

It is clear that Omikron has long since arrived in Europe, the USA and elsewhere in spite of the suspended flight connections from South Africa and is also spreading there at breathtaking speed.