The threat posed by the Omicron variant has now come into sharper focus, with recent clinical data and laboratory studies lending support to early reports suggesting that it is milder but more transmissible than other variants of the new coronavirus.
“It spreads very, very fast, but it doesn’t appear to have the virulence or machismo to really pack as much of a wallop as the Alpha or Delta variants,” James Musser, chairman of Houston Methodist Hospital’s pathology and genomic medicine department and the leader of a new study of Omicron infections, said of the variant.