In late 2021, the world was on a date with the discovery of a new variant of the Corona virus that causes Covid-19 disease.

The World Health Organization called the new variant "Omicron".

According to the Collins Dictionary, the name comes from the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, meaning "fifth".

The emergence of the Omicron mutant came after vaccinating millions of people with vaccinations against the Corona virus, and several fears arose that the vaccinations would not have the same effectiveness on the new mutant, which is, in fact, a legitimate fear, especially since the new mutant is concentrated in the area that vaccinations mostly target.

So how was Omicron's impact in his first year?

And why has it become the most prevalent version of the virus?

The Corona virus, which causes Covid-19 disease, appeared in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan (Getty Images)

Mutants.. their source and the reasons for their appearance

The Corona virus that causes Covid-19 disease (which was called SARS-CoV-2) appeared in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and the virus was isolated from patients, and a genomic (genetic) sequence of the virus was developed in China, with it being made available to everyone on the Internet in early 2019. 2020.

The scientific community and the World Health Organization relied on the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, which was in use years earlier, to store and track the genome of the various isolates of the virus, which reached more than 13 million genomes until October 2022.

This system provided an opportunity for researchers from all over the world to study the details of the genome of the virus isolated from different parts of the world, and to compare it with the original virus isolated from Wuhan at the onset of the disease.

From this data, it became clear that the virus genome consists of about 30,000 units (each called a nucleotide) containing 29 genes responsible for the formation of less than 30 proteins.

This, of course, shows that the virus genome is very small compared to the human genome, which consists of 3 billion units (nucleotides) with more than 44 thousand genes, and hundreds of thousands of proteins.

When the genome of a new isolate of the virus is compared with the original genome and there is a difference between the new and original genomes, the new isolate is called a "mutated".

This difference occurs as a result of a genetic mutation or an error in the process of multiplying the virus with its genetic material during the process of creating new viruses inside the patient’s body.

The process of these mutations or errors occurring randomly, and therefore may occur in any part of the virus genome, negatively or positively affecting its seriousness, speed of spread, and ability to infect;

Thus, not every change (every mutant) is important or dangerous.

The system for naming mutants gives each mutator a symbol that is used in scientific references and an easy name for the media (Getty Images)

Numerous mutants and different names

So far, the World Health Organization has detected thousands of variants of the virus, and initially it was referred to by the name of the country or city in which the variant was first isolated;

There was the English, South African, Indian and Brazilian coronavirus mutants.

However, this method of naming included a kind of stigmatization of the countries in which the mutant appears.

Consequently, the World Health Organization adopted a simple naming system that gives each mutant a special symbol that is used in references and in the scientific and medical community, and another easy name that is used in the media for easy communication with the public.

The new name was based on the Greek letters, and the mutants present at the time were named retrospectively.

For example, the English variant was renamed from the UK variant to the "alpha" variant and was given the code (B.1.1.7), and the South African variant was called the "beta" variant and was given the code (B.1.351).

The World Health Organization classifies mutants into several main categories according to their degree of importance:

1- Mutants under surveillance and tracking: These are the mutants that have been proven or expected to be dangerous, including alpha and beta mutants.

2- Mutants that should be closely monitored: they are any mutants that contain any change in the region to which the virus binds to the receptors of human cells.

3- Mutants of concern: These are the mutants that show an increased risk, ability to infect, or rapid spread.

4- Mutants with severe consequences: These are the mutants that show serious consequences, such as the failure of known diagnostic methods to diagnose them or their ability to escape known vaccines.

5- Other mutants: They are any mutants that do not fall into the previous four sections, and they are usually non-dangerous mutants and have no effect on increasing the severity of the virus and we do not need to monitor them.

15 of the 37 mutations are found in the region that binds to the cellular receptor on the surface of respiratory tract cells (Shutterstock)

Omicron mutant.. 37 mutations in one protein

The fifth mutant in the list of mutants of concern was called Omicron, and received the symbol (B.1.1.529), and it was the first to be named according to the new naming system before previous mutants were named in the same way retroactively.

The first copies of the Omicron mutator were isolated in November 2021 from a group of patients from different and distant countries, including countries to which the case traveled or left to another country. This list includes Botswana, South Africa, Hong Kong, Egypt, Belgium, Madagascar and India.

The first thing that drew attention to the potential for great danger of this mutant was that it had a very large number of mutations (37 mutations) in the “S” protein responsible for starting the infection, as this protein binds to a specific receptor on the surface of the cells of the respiratory system in humans, from which it begins. Penetration and entry into the cell to cause infection.

Preliminary analyzes of the genome of the new mutant found that 15 of the 37 mutations are located exactly in the region that binds to the particular receptor on the surface of cells of the respiratory tract.

Which caused justified concern about this mutant, as the many changes in this region portend two problems:

The first, which was later proven correct, is the increased ability of the Omicron mutant to cause infection due to its greater ability to bind to the cellular receptor on the surface of cells of the respiratory tract.

As for the second problem, it is the fear that the intense changes in the “S” protein may affect the effectiveness of the current vaccines that were given daily to millions of people with the aim of preventing the virus, and in order to restore life to its previous state before the epidemic.

Omicron immediately proved to be more capable of spreading than its closest mutant, the delta mutant (Shutterstock)

A year since the emergence of the Omicron mutant

The World Health Organization issued a detailed report on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the emergence of the most important variant among the thousands of variants that were discovered for the Corona virus, which is the Omicron variant.

The report shows that Omicron immediately proved to be more capable of spreading than its closest variant, the Delta variant, which was previously known as the Indian variant.

In less than a month, Omicron had spread all over the world and its spread covered the spread of the delta mutant.

This was accompanied by a noticeable increase in the rates of hospitalization for corona cases, and an increase in deaths, and this focused on patients with chronic diseases who did not obtain vaccination.

But for those who have received the vaccine or have previously been infected, it has been observed that the severity of the disease is less than the previous mutants.

During the year, more than 500 new variants descended from the Omicron variant appeared without a significant increase in the severity or severity of the disease.

Vaccines have also been shown to perform with acceptable efficacy with Omicron.

Recently, bivalent vaccines have appeared, carrying two vaccines together.

The first is the vaccine against the original virus, and the second is against the mutated Omicron.

According to the monitoring and tracking system used by the World Health Organization, the spread of the Omicron variant has reached 100% in some countries, and more than 98% in most countries of the world, replacing the original virus and all its other variants.