In two recent studies, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found evidence that the omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 causes less severe disease than previous variants at least in rodents but that many antibody-based therapies may not be effective against it.

Axar.az reports that when South African scientists announced in November that they had identified a new variant of the virus that causes COVID-19, they also reported two worrying details: one, that this new variant's genome was strikingly different from that of any previous variant, containing dozens of mutations compared with the original virus that emerged in 2019; and two, that the new variant dubbed omicron was spreading like wildfire.

The world needed to know quickly how well COVID-19 immunity either from vaccination or prior infection and therapies would hold up against this new variant.