UC San Diego scientists said Sunday evening that they are urging to find samples of the coronavirus Omicron variant to help in the global effort to assess whether it is more transmissible and harmful than previous versions of the virus.
It is possible that the new variant could be discovered this week in San Diego County through genetic analysis that UC San Diego is doing on positive coronavirus tests, a campus official said.
The county health department and some hospitals are also conducting such tests.
“It’s just a matter of time and testing before we find it here,” said Dr. Davey Smith, head of infectious diseases at UC San Diego, which was one of the first universities to generally test students, faculty and staff for COVID-19.
UC San Diego scientists have also helped conduct COVID-19 vaccine trials on behalf of Modern, Johnson & amp; Johnson and AstraZeneca, and has been testing therapeutic drugs on patients.
Scripps Research also said late Sunday that it is designed to assess Omicron’s potential threat to public health.
Smith said scientists are still beginning to understand Omicron, but added, “The vaccines we have now should work pretty well against it. People should be vaccinated, and take their boosters.”
UC San Diego has about 8,500 international students, many of whom will resume the fall quarter on Monday. Some of the students traveled back home during the Thanksgiving break. The university hosts many students from abroad, including the UK, who have reported Omicron cases.
But campus officials say the school is likely to continue to have a tiny infection rate as it will be testing all dormant students for the virus. UC San Diego has also been strongly enforcing social distance rules.
Prior to the start of the Thanksgiving holiday, the infection rate among students accessing campus was 0.22 percent.
But there is a lot of worry about the new variant.
“We’re hampered by the fact that there’s still nothing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature,” said Robert “Chip” Schooley, who runs UC San Diego’s Return to Learn program.
“I came in contact with a colleague from Hong Kong whom I trust and respect more than anyone else in virology. He has been working with the virus in his lab and has been observing it epidemiologically.
“His view is that it is, indeed, highly contagious but that vaccinated people who become infected have relatively mild symptoms (such as advances).”
Schooley said he believes the virus is “more aggressive about shutting down the intrinsic immune response than the Alpha and Delta variants,” which he said will allow it to grow to much higher levels during the pre-symptomatic phase. “This, in turn, will result in higher transmissibility and (probably) more severe diseases in the unvaccinated,” he said.
Schooley added, “We are not currently planning to change our holiday travel policies but, as in other aspects of our adaptive response situation, we will be monitoring the situation on a daily basis and we modify our approach as conditions dictate. ”