Covid symptoms linked to the new omicron variant have been described as “extremely mild” by the South African doctor who first raised the alarm over the new strain.
The Omicron variant has a ‘record’ number of mutations that may hinder vaccine effectiveness, NIH director says. We do know that this is a variant that has a lot of mutations – like 50 of them, and more than 30 of those in the spike protein, which is the part off the virus that attaches to your human cells if you get infected. That is a new record in terms of the number of mutations,” he added. “It does make you worry, therefore, that it’s a sufficiently different virus, that it might not respond as well to protection from the vaccines.