After developing a special PCR test to specifically detect the Omicron variant BA.1, a team of international researchers led by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin analyzed over 13,000 respiratory samples from Covid patients that had been taken in 22 African countries between mid-2021 and early 2022. The scientists detected viruses with Omicron-specific mutations in 25 people from six different countries who were infected with Covid in August and September 2021, more than two months before the variant was first detected in South Africa.

Plus, a historic global agreement on biodiversity and how researchers can help to solve the energy crisis. One million people in China could die from COVID-19 within the next few months as the country reduces its strict health protections, a preprint study predicts. “We have 30 by 30,” said Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, Steven Guilbeault, a former climate protester.

However, two studies find that the number of deaths could be reduced by giving most of the population a fourth vaccine dose, combined with a high level of adherence to masking and reimposition of temporary restrictions on social interactions when death rates surge. The study suggests that if 85% of the population gets a fourth dose of a vaccine other than the inactivated-virus vaccines most people in the country have received, it could slow the rise in infections and reduce the number of severe infections and deaths.

The zero COVID policy involved drastic restrictions on mobility with half of China's highways closed and ports operating inefficiently. It has been pointed out that China’s dynamic zero-Covid policy could ravage the Chinese and world economy. Countries need to prepare themselves if the effect of the COVID waves in China due to moving away from zero COVID policy has an impact on their COVID situation potentially due to the emergence of a new dangerous variant and its spears across the globe. China’s Covid policy to be year’s largest economic shock.

Following the draconian measures put in place by Chinese health authorities throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a totally relaxed approach has been recently adopted in order to stop the people's angry protests against China's "zero Covid" strategy. Noteworthy, the acquirement of "non-silent" mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, consisting of approximately 30,000 nucleobases, appears to be tightly connected with viral multiplication kinetics, with each replication cycle implying as an an average the occurrence of one mutational event every 10,000 nucleotides.

In their study, Prof. Diel and his team analysed some 5,700 samples collected from white-tailed deer in New York in the period from 2020–22. They compared the genomic sequences of the Covid variants found in the deer with the sequences of the same variants in New York’s human population. Prof. Diel said: “When we did sequence comparisons between those viruses recovered from white-tailed deer with the human sequences, we observed a significant number of mutations across the virus genome.”