Francesco Guarascio, Alistair Smout, and Chen Lin

LONDON/BRUSSELS/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Governments around the world are urgently scouring databases for recent cases of COVID-19 infections, screening travellers and decoding the viral genomes of the new variant as they try to measure how far it has spread.

This highlights the urgency for governments and public health officials to quickly decide whether to adopt unpopular economic damaging measures to stop Omicron spreading.

The data suggests that the virus was already in circulation before its official identification in south Africa last week. It has been confirmed in at least a dozen other countries since then. The investigation to determine whether it is more deadly, infected or has evaded vaccines may take several weeks.

Britain and the other big economies ban flights from and to southern Africa days after it was discovered. This caused panic in global financial markets, and raised concerns about possible economic damages.

This is in sharp contrast to other variants emerging. When the first Alpha samples were discovered in Britain in September 2020 the government took months collecting data and assessing the danger before declaring a national lockdown for December.

The World Health Organization (WHO), took months to make it a variant in concern, its highest classification.

Israel bought 10 million more kits for PCR testing to identify the Omicron variant, shortly after it detected its first Omicron-positive case. The country closed all borders to anyone from any other countries Saturday.

Scotland and Singapore are scrambling to check tens of thousands of recent positive cases for signs of the variant they may have missed and the United States is enhancing https://reut.rs/3FZcUGP its COVID-19 surveillance to distinguish domestic cases of the Omicron variant from the still-dominant Delta.

As some countries are still struggling to catch up to two years after the outbreak, the European Union’s Health Commissioner has called on member states to increase their efforts to identify mutations.

Now, the bloc has confirmed 42 cases in ten countries.

Stella Kyriakides, a Stella Kyriakides spokesperson for the EU’s health ministers wrote to Reuters: “Certain Member States lag back considerably in terms of these crucial dimensions.”

She wrote that she was already facing a difficult winter because of the transmissibility high of the Delta version (…) and may be now experiencing additional or more pressures due to the emergence of Omicron variant.

(GRAPHIC: OMICRON VARIANT MAP – https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-VARIANT/zdvxonlxxpx/Omicron.jpg)

All about the S-GENE

Omicron can’t be distinguished from Delta, which is the predominant and most infective version of the virus.

Omicron must be distinguished from Delta by the PCR test. It should detect a mutation known as Sgene Dropout or Sgene Target Failure (SGTF).

This mutation isn’t a guarantee of success, as the Alpha variant was first discovered in Britain.

Alpha has stopped being widely circulated, therefore the S-gene dropsout indicates the sample is positive. This alerts Omicron to forward the specimen for DNA sequencing.

If local PCR testing cannot detect the mutation, random PCR swab specimens must be sequenced. This can take as long as a week.

Omicron is a variant of Omicron that has been confirmed by the WHO.

It has recommended only the TaqPath test by U.S. company Thermo Fisher, (NYSE:), as a proxy.

Because of its special characteristics, kits are not likely to be purchased by other countries. Singapore is considering buying more, although no decision has yet been made, Kenneth Mak, the health ministry’s director of medical services, told Reuters.

Thermo Fisher stated that it will increase its production in order to satisfy demand from Africa as well as other countries, while they track the progress of the new version.

Israel immediately began testing positive travellers at Ben Gurion’s main Ben Gurion Airport for the S Genee, Sharon Alroy Preis, Israel’s head of public and health, said to Parliament Sunday.

Its labs now monitor the mutation for it in every test nationwide. If a positive PCR test identifies SGTF then the sample will be taken to the health ministry for further sequencing.

According to Scott Becker (chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, a network of public health laboratories in the United States), most U.S. laboratory will use the TaqPath testing method.

QUIRKS FOR THE VARIANT

From the 150,000 positive Belgian tests, 47 showed S-gene drops-out or high viral loads. Marc Van Rast (one of the virologists who examined the samples) said that Omicron was the only one.

Nine cases of Omicron were discovered by the Scottish authorities, each linked to the same event.

The team discovered that S-gene Target Failure had been appearing again in tests around Nov. 16th, just a week after South Africa and Botswana found the new variant. As it helped Alpha emerge, this feature also assisted in direct genomic sequencing.

“That is one the quirks this particular variant that can we use to our advantage,” Gregor Smith said Monday.

Smith explained that this allows the government to estimate how common the variant is, to identify those who might need to be tested again, and to prioritize which samples to decode in laboratories.

It’s “the best way that we can identify cases at the moment.”