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However, a study from the United States showed that this omicron mutation could be a hybrid of a coronavirus and a cold virus. Therefore, it is a hypothesis that the symptoms are mild instead of spreading quickly and getting sick like a cold, but it has not been sufficiently verified yet.



Reporter Park Chan-geun reports.



<Reporter> This



is a thesis related to Omicron mutation published by Conference, an American medical data analysis company.



A new type of nucleotide sequence not found in the existing Corona 19 mutation was found in the Omicron mutation, which is the same as a part of the nucleotide sequence of the seasonal cold virus.



This cold virus only causes simple cold symptoms, but does not cause fatal pneumonia like Corona or MERS.



The explanation is that because of this similarity, there is a possibility that Omicron mutations are better adapted to humans than existing COVID-19 mutations and spread faster.



[Kim Jung-gi/Professor, College of Pharmacy, Korea University: (The paper) proposes the hypothesis that the high transmission and low pathogenicity of Omicron is due to this insertional mutation.] In



fact, in South Africa, where Omicron mutation was first reported, The number of daily new confirmed cases, which was 2,465 per day, increased 6.5 times in eight days to 16,55 the day before.



However, experts agreed that additional research is needed to understand the actual risk, saying that the contagiousness and severity of the Omicron virus cannot be determined just because it has some of the same nucleotide sequence as the cold virus.



Our health authorities also took a cautious stance that it is difficult to assess the level of public health risk based on this hypothesis alone, and that we need to monitor the spread of infection as there is still insufficient information on infection among the elderly.



(Video coverage: Il-Sang Han, Video editing: Ho-Jin Kim, CG: Sang-Soo Ryu, Soo-In Jo)



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