By the Associated Press.
As the world grapples with the emergence of the new highly transmissible variant of COVID-19, worried scientists in South Africa where omicron was first identified are scrambling to combat its lightning spread across the country.
In the space of two weeks, omicron has sent South Africa from a period of low transmission to rapid growth of new confirmed cases. The country’s numbers are still relatively low, but omicron’s speed in infecting young South Africans alarms experts. What looked like a cluster infection among some university students in Pretoria ballooned into hundreds, then thousands of new cases.
Studying the surge, scientists identified the new variant that is likely responsible for 90% of the new cases.
