Over the past few days, Omicron has been showing up everywhere from the United Kingdom to the Czech Republic.
With 32 mutations from the original Alpha strain of coronavirus, Omicron remains little understood. It may be more transmissible and more resilient against current vaccines, as Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a White House press conference on Wednesday, but more data is still needed. What has become clear is that it is already appearing in significant numbers in Europe, which was recently designated by the WHO as the global epicenter of COVID thanks to an ongoing surge of Delta.
In Spain, where three cases of Omicron have been detected, at least two of them in fully vaccinated travelers and one who had not visited Africa, vaccine passports are being rolled out in Barcelona and Madrid. In the Netherlands, normally bustling streets are dead, with bars and eateries are now forced to shutter even earlier — at 5 pm —and soccer games will once again be played to empty stadiums.
A passenger from a flight from South Africa gets tested for the coronavirus at the Amsterdam Schiphol airport in the Netherlands.
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