Rich nations have been lulled into a false sense of security by their high vaccine rates
There’s a grim inevitability to the fact that the latest concerning strain of the Covid-19 virus — known as B.1.1.529, and now nicknamed Omicron — should have been first identified in SA.
In part, that’s just a reflection of the fact that two out of five people in the planet live in one of the Brics nations. It’s also no coincidence that new variants were first identified in countries with the sophisticated scientific infrastructure needed to spot them. The Brics are some of the biggest players in the global market for generic drugs, and India and SA have performed a key role in debates over intellectual property waivers to increase access to medicines.
At the same time, the sheer diversity of mutations means it will be hard to know for sure whether these changes will amplify or cancel each other out until we’ve been able to observe the latest variant’s progress in humans, said Mackay.
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