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Experiment: Transmission is difficult to test in the lab, so this is a real-world experiment. Researchers will use sequencing tests to track how many of the actual cases of covid-19 they see are due to omicrons. If this percentage starts to increase and similar growth is seen in different countries, it will be a sign that the omicron is being transmitted more rapidly.

That’s what happened with the alpha variant. appeared in UK in 2020. By December of that year, it had made up an increasing share of British cases, and within a few months it also dominated the caseloads in the rest of Europe and the US. It was later replaced by alpha delta. Both of these strains, with alpha and delta, took about four months from introduction to account for most cases. If Omicron does the same, it will be the dominant species by March or April 2021.

“When we see a replacement, it strongly implies the transmission advantage,” Thiel says. “But if it’s only happening in one place, it might be by chance.” He says the rise of Omicron in South Africa alone doesn’t prove whether the variant is more contagious.

How close: It may take a month or longer for conclusive evidence for higher transferability. This is because it takes about five to six days for a newly infected person to produce enough virus to infect others. Researchers will need to observe multiple rounds of infection and spread to see if Omicron is transmitting more quickly.

Such research could be accelerated if researchers stretch the timeline backward by sequencing older samples. Already, doctors in Nigeria said they found omicron in a banked covid-19 sample in that country. This can offer an early data point.

What’s next: It’s not just the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has changed; So is the human phase where the pandemic emerges. Omicron will face more diverse conditions than any variant so far, including countries where nearly everyone is vaccinated, countries using different vaccines, where most people are already infected with covid-19, and “zero-covid” countries such as China and New Zealand. This means that the omicron can take hold in some areas but fade out in others.

NSoes micron cause more severe disease?

Anxiety: Initially, some South African doctors said that the symptoms caused by the new variant appeared milder, but later came reports that more hospital beds were being filled. Currently, no one knows if omicron causes worse symptoms.

The problem is that the omicron is so new that most cases are only a week or two old, while it usually takes several weeks for covid-19 to cause serious problems or death. “It is too early to say anything about the severity of the disease. So far we can’t really say anything,” says Christian Althaus, an epidemiologist in Bern.

Experiment: To measure disease severity, Researchers may expose laboratory animals such as mice or monkeys to omycron, but the final answers will come from real-world data about humans, including doctor observations, hospital records, and death counts.

How close: Whether the Omicron causes worse disease or different symptoms is probably the question that will take the longest to answer – possibly several months.

With all the uncertainty around the Omicron and the possibility that vaccines may not work that well, the researchers are reminding the public of tactics they say will curb the spread of any variant, such as isolation, social distancing and mask-wearing. “There is no variant in which these interventions would not work,” Thiel says.

He also says that the omikron is a sign of things to come. “In the coming months or years, it will be difficult. There will be new variants; We have to wait for that,” he says. “But stock markets shouldn’t react to all variables in a frightened way. This is the future and we will have to deal with it.”