When the news about the new Omikron variant first hit the headlines a week ago, around 120 employees from a company for renewable energies gathered in a restaurant in downtown Oslo.

Everyone should have been vaccinated, it was the Christmas dinner together.

At least one employee had just returned from a business trip from South Africa.

Now this Christmas party dominates the news in Norway.

Up to 60 of the 120 employees have contracted the corona virus.

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Nature and Science” section.

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Matthias Wyssuwa

Political correspondent for Northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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Initially, the omicron variant was only detected in one person.

The authorities assume that there are many more cases.

On Friday, the Norwegian broadcaster NRK quoted a representative of the city administration as saying that 15 to 20 people are likely to be infected with the new variant.

Further investigations are ongoing.

The Christmas party in Oslo could become one of the first major omicron outbreaks in Europe.

When the knowledge of Omikron reached the European public at the end of last week, many countries hectically tightened their entry regulations.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control announced on Thursday that despite limited information, Omikron has modeled it could become the dominant virus variant in Europe within the next few months.

Biontech boss Ugur Sahin said on Friday that he assumed that a new vaccine would be necessary for the mutant and that Omikron should develop as a so-called escape variant, which also infects vaccinated people more than before.

How much more contagious is the variant?

Even if Sahin was certain that Biontech will be able to adapt its vaccine quickly and that vaccinated persons will continue to be protected from the course of severe disease: The fear of the new mutant is great, and so are the uncertainties. What do all the mutations in the virus mean for vaccination protection, how much more contagious is the variant, and what are the courses?

In South Africa, where the new mutant was first discovered, Omikron is in the process of controlling the infection process nationwide. The effective reproduction number, which indicates the contagion potential of the virus, has skyrocketed in the most affected areas within two weeks from well below one to 2.3. At a press conference in the hotspot province of Gauteng, attention was drawn to the unusually steep increase in the number of cases. Both younger and older people are affected. Initial reports from doctors that omicron infections could be milder than those with the Delta variant despite the many mutations have not been confirmed by South African officials.

In the Gauteng region, the number of hospital admissions for Omikron infected people is increasing significantly.

The number of seriously ill children under the age of four is strikingly high.

According to its spokesman Christian Lindmeier, the World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet reported any deaths from Omicron infections.

However, this is not to be understood as the all-clear, because a Covid 19 disease usually only leads to death weeks after the first symptoms.