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a specific focus on countries identified ‘at risk’. He also asked officials to review plans for easing of international travel restrictions in light of the emerging new evidence. The meeting comes amid rising global concerns over a new strain of the coronavirus which the World Health Organization has named ‘Omicron’ and classified as a highly transmissible virus of concern. The meeting was attended by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, P K Mishra, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan and NITI Aayog member (health) Dr V K Paul among others.
Travelers from South Africa will be required to quarantine on arrival in Mumbai and their test samples will be sent for genome sequencing, Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar said on Saturday.
The World Health Organization on Friday designated the new variant B.1.1.529 found in South Africa as a VOC – ‘variant of concern’ and named it Omicron. The first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on 9 November, 2021. According to WHO, this variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning. Scientists are still unclear on how effective vaccines will be against the new variant, which displays mutations that might resist neutralization. Only several dozen cases have been fully identified so far in South Africa, Botswana, Hong Kong, Belgium and Israel.
The new variant, B.1.1.529, has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” with more than 30 in the spike protein alone, according to Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform. The spike protein is the chief target of antibodies that the immune system produces to fight a Covid-19 infection. So many mutations raised concerns that Omicron’s spike might be able to evade antibodies produced by either a previous infection or a vaccine.
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