New Delhi: Less than a month after Omicron was first detected in southern Africa, scientists and medical experts are still in the process of analysing the latest strain of coronavirus and its effects on COVID-19 vaccine, etc.
However, the spectre of a ‘super variant’ has set alarm bells ringing.
According to Moderna’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Paul Burton, if a patient gets infected with both Delta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 virus at the same time, that person could be Patient Zero for a ‘super strain’.
The Delta strain had devastated India in the second wave of COVID pandemic earlier this year and hurt several other countries as well.
And now, Omicron is believed to be several times more contagious than Delta and may be immune to some of the vaccines being used around the world to fight the dangerous coronavirus.
With Omicron spreading rapidly across the world, Dr Burton told the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology committee that the possibility of a super strain cannot be ruled out.
“There’s certainly data, there have been some papers published again from South Africa earlier from the pandemic when people – and certainly immunocompromised people – can harbour both viruses,” the Daily Mail quoted Dr Burton as saying.
He added that it was highly possible that both variants can swap genes and form an even more dangerous strain.
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