Omicron strain could have been created artificially

Professor Piotr Chumakov, the Head of the Cell Proliferation Laboratory at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that the new Omicron coronavirus variant is of artificial origin, TASS reports

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"It must be the work of the same people. It is a conspiracy theory again, but I think so. Now they decided to end the pandemic, because the time has come for drastic changes in the world. In the next three to four months, a lot will change. Those who launched the pandemic decided to stop it. <...> Now is the right moment when – for some political reasons – they decided to quickly turn the pandemic down,” he told Radio Russia.

Mr. Chumakov said that the new strain of the coronavirus combines all the features of the previous ones, which may confirm the fact of its creation. At the same time, the expert called this strain ‘super-weakened’. “This is not just a mutation. They collected all the mutations that were known, which were already encountered in this virus spontaneously. That is, when it evolved, there were some mutations that caused some changes in its properties,” he added

On November 26th, the World Health Organisation designated the B.1.1.529 coronavirus strain – found in southern Africa – with the Greek letter omicron. The WHO said in a statement that this variant ‘has a large number of mutations, some of which are of concern’. The global epicentre of the Omicron strain distribution is southern Africa, with the largest number of those infected with it being detected in South Africa. A new strain of coronavirus has been identified in more than 60 countries around the world.