Highly mutated Omicron variant puts scientists on alert. Researchers are racing to determine whether a fast-spreading COVID19 variant poses a threat to COVID vaccines’ effectiveness. #COVID19 #Omicronvariant #Nature #AndrewSteele.

“A burning question is ‘does it reduce vaccine effectiveness, because it has so many changes?’,” says Aris Katzourakis, who studies virus evolution at the University of Oxford, UK. Moore says breakthrough infections have been reported in South Africa among people who have received any of the three kinds of vaccines in use there, from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer–BioNTech and Oxford–AstraZeneca. Two quarantined travellers in Hong Kong who have tested positive for the variant were vaccinated with the Pfizer jab, according to news reports. One individual had travelled from South Africa; the other was infected during hotel quarantining. Read more.