COVID-9 is a strongly contagious (接触性传染的) coronavirus (冠状病标) that can cause many illnesses like a runny nose, a sore throat, coughs and fever, even it can lead to death. We know it has kept changing so far. We're growing what could be the most contagious coronavirus yet at a safe lab in Toronto, Canada, to study what danger Omicron actually brings. Scientists know Omicron has more mutations (突变) to the viruses than Alpha and Delta, but it will take very long time to find out what all those mutations mean.
We can't just look at one and say oh, because of the mutation at 501 we know this is going to happen, because it happened with Alpha or with Delta. So that's why we have to look at it in the whole thing, which is why we have to do all the work in highly safe labs.
Researchers are also studying the growing number of people testing positive for Omicron to answer three very important questions: Whether is it easier to make people sick? Does it lead to more serious illness? Is it easier to break through our immune (免疫) system, especially in vaccinated (接种疫苗的) people? We need to see many kinds of cases, we need to compare it to patients who have the other viruses such as Alpha and Delta to get some ideas. That will take a lot of time.
According to the latest data from South Africa, hospitals reported that they saw a rapidly growing number of mostly unvaccinated patients infected by Omicron. It suggested Omicron is more contagious, but it led to less serious illness compared to Alpha and Delta. The news made some people from all over the world filled with both hope and doubt. I keep my own opinion, because we've seen some news about mutations, but it isn't the fact.
For now, Delta is still driving the numbers, since 2021, a large number of people have died from COVID-19, most of them are unvaccinated.
