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My name is Barry Schoub.
I'm a Professor Emeritus of Virology at
the University of the Witwatersrand,
which is the university
in Johannesburg.
I retired from that post but I am
trained as a medical virologist,
and currently I chair the Ministerial
Advisory Committee on COVID vaccines.
We advise our government on
aspects related to COVID vaccines.
What we are talking about
is the Omicron variant.
The latest, the fifth, of
the variants of concern,
which are spread
around the world,
basically causing havoc
around the world,
and I'll looking at predominantly
from a South African perspective.
You might ask why a South
African perspective?
The virus was first
discovered in South Africa,
and a lot of the science has come from
scientists in South Africa as a result of it.
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This is a brief timeline of
Omicron in South Africa.
It was first detected or first
alerted to in early November
by what's called a
S-gene target failure.
What we mean by that is that
the specific PCR tests,
that is a Thermofisher TaqMan® test
for those who are in the field,
it picks up various
genes of the virus,
and with this
particular variant,
the Omicron variant,
it fails to pick up the
S-gene in that test.
That's a very good alerting signal
or a screen test for the Omicron.
It was picked up by a junior
medical technologist
in one of the
semi-rural laboratories
private laboratories in
Africa, just out of interest.
Anyway, that was
in early November.
In mid-November,
the first actual detection of
Omicron was made in Botswana,
which is a neighboring country,
north west of South Africa,
and probably came
from South Africa.
12th November, the first detection
of Omicron in South Africa.
It was then described
by scientists,
and published on
24th of November.
The World Health Organization
designated it as
the fifth variant
concern, or VOC,
as Omicron from the
Greek letter ο.
On the 7th of December,
the first neutralizing
antibody test
revealed that this particular Omicron variant
was relatively resistant to antibodies,
either from past infection
or from vaccines.
On the 14th, we had the first
clinical vaccine effective studies.
Just a brief timeline of the early
stages of Omicron in South Africa.
