What makes Omicron spread more rapidly compared to other COVID-19 variants?
Health, Jan. 27, 2022
What makes Omicron spread more rapidly compared to other COVID-19 variants?
The likelier situation, at least as far as the current data shows, is that Omicron appears to be more contagious due to its ability to evade immunity—meaning more previously vaccinated or infected people are getting breakthrough infections, Vladimir Minin, PhD, professor of statistics and associate director of UC Irvine Infectious Disease Science Initiative, tells Health. … According to Phil Felgner, PhD, [professor in residence of physiology & biophysics], director of the UCI Vaccine Research and Development Center … the mutation is what allows the virus to survive. If the virus is allowed to replicate—as it does, primarily among the unvaccinated population, “it can be transmitted from infected person to another person, and then the virus survives and keeps replicating,” explains Felgner.