Scientists race to find out if vaccines will stop Omicron

“Based on lots of work people have done on other variants and other mutations, we can be pretty confident these mutations are going to cause an appreciable drop in antibody neutralization,” Dr. Bloom said, referring to the body’s ability to attack an invading virus.

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South African doctors are seeing an increase in reinfections in people who already had a bout of Covid-19, suggesting that the variant can overcome natural immunity, said Dr. Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal…

Some of these mutations have been seen before. Some were thought to have powered the Beta variant’s ability to sidestep vaccines, while others most likely turbocharged Delta’s extreme contagiousness.

“My best guess is that this combines both of those elements,” Penny Moore, a virologist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa, said of the new variant.

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