It is clear that Omicron is dangerous: Three theories about the development of a new strain of coronavirus

Researchers around the world are in a feverish search for answers to the questions of what properties the new omicron variant of the coronavirus has and where it comes from.

The language of scientists is sometimes too academic, but here they are actually trying to figure out when the pandemic will finally end and how we can better protect ourselves from new mutations.

Although little data is still available, it is clear that omicron is dangerous.

Due to about fifty mutations on the spike protein, through which the pathogen penetrates human cells, existing vaccines are more difficult to recognize omicron. This means that the vaccinated are also more at risk.

This mutation is more contagious, so multiple infections in a short period of time could quickly lead to crowded hospitals. It is also possible that many patients develop a severe clinical picture. In the meantime, the first patients infected with omicron ended up in hospitals, and deaths were also recorded.

Omikron will continue to spread rapidly and in a few months could supplant the delta variant, which prevails in many parts of the world.

The sudden appearance of a highly infectious variant is of great interest to science. Because it is not only about the further development of the existing variants, but it is obvious that it was created before or in parallel with the alpha, beta, gamma and delta variants.

Because omicron is so different from other strains of the virus, it is difficult to determine the closest relatives of the virus, Emma Hodcroft, a virologist at the University of Bern, told Deutsche Welle (DW).

The omicron family tree in the Nextstrain database, into which researchers from around the world input virus sequencing results, clearly shows that this parallel evolution of the virus could have started as early as the mid-2020s. There are three scientific theories about how it developed.

The first theory: Omicron originated in an isolated population

Omicron could have developed in an isolated population, where it had been circulating for a long time. There, multiple people were infected and recovered unnoticed, and this was not recorded by tests and sequencing of the virus.

This theory was favored in a scientific magazine by Christian Dorsten, chief virologist of Berlin's Charita Clinic. "My guess is that omicron didn't develop in South Africa, where a lot of DNA sequencing is currently being done, but somewhere in southern Africa during the winter wave," Dorsten said. "There have been a lot of infections there for a long time, and to develop one such virus requires enormous evolutionary pressure."

Andrew Rambow from the University of Edinburgh thinks that this theory is not convincing enough.

He cannot imagine that the virus could have remained hidden in one group of people for so long.

"I'm not sure there's a place in the world that's so isolated where this variant of the virus could have been transmitted for so long without showing up in other places."

Another theory: Originated in people with weak immunity

Omicron could have formed in patients infected with covid 19, possibly in someone whose immune response has worsened due to other diseases or drugs they are using.

These could be patients suffering from cancer or people infected with HIV, because in people with weakened immunity, the body fights the virus longer. And the virus then has more time to develop mutations to avoid the immune response.

Proponent of this theory, Richard Lessels from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, points to a young woman in South Africa infected with HIV, who carried the coronavirus inside her for more than six months. In her and other patients whose infections lasted for weeks or months, various mutations of the virus were observed.

However, according to Christian Drosten, the entire experience with influenza and other viruses in immunosuppressed patients clearly speaks against this theory: in these people, variants do indeed develop that escape the immune system, but are accompanied by a series of other changes that reduce their ability to transmit from person to person, Drosten believes.

And compared to other variants of corona, omicron is clearly more contagious.

Third theory: Omicron evolved in animals and passed on to humans

The virus could also hide in the animal host and develop there further and then (again) pass to humans as a mutated omicron variant. This theory is advocated, for example, by Christian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at Scripps Research, or evolutionary biologist Mike Woroby from the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Meanwhile, this theory has been supported by numerous evidences that certain animals are prone to infection with the coronavirus.

This is the reason why most scientists assume that the original type of corona, which first appeared in Wuhan, China two years ago, was of animal origin.

That is why millions of minks (animals from the weasel family) were killed in 2020, primarily in Denmark, because researchers found mutated versions of corona in them.

Veterinarians assume that the virus passed from humans to weasels. They fear that the animals can still infect humans with mutated versions.

As further evidence, proponents of this theory state that the virus in animals is exposed to a completely different evolutionary pressure, which could explain many new, partly unique omicron mutations.