On November 26, the World Health Organization designated the strain of coronavirus surging in South Africa a “variant of concern” and christened it Omicron. The next day, University of British ...

After it was first detected in South Africa last November, Omicron spread around the globe faster than any previous variant of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, readily infecting even those who had been ...

This is the second in a series on the Omicron variants. Scientific progress in understanding Omicron has been remarkably swift since its discovery in late November of last year. The newest paper from ...

The first molecular-level analysis of Omicron’s spike protein reveals mutation-induced chemical bonds are behind the new SARS-CoV-2 variant’s increased transmissibility and antibody evasion.

In a recent study posted to the bioRxiv* pre-print server, researchers used cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine the structure of the spike (S) protein of BA.2 sub-variant of the ...

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron family of variants differs from the original isolates as well as other variants. Omicron viruses contain a minimum of 30 mutations in the Spike protein and another 23 elsewhere ...

In November, a new coronavirus variant took the world by storm. Omicron has since caused an unprecedented wave of infections, striking about 90 million people in just 10 weeks. That’s more COVID-19 ...

Active genomic surveillance and transparent communication by South African scientists and public health practitioners recently heralded a new, rapidly circulating SARS-CoV-2 variant, now called ...

The omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has now been around for more than a year. Before omicron became dominant, there had been a quick succession of named variants of ...