Omicron completely changed the pandemic. Are we prepared for what’s next? – CBC
‘Omicron was a giant step in the wrong direction of where we wanted to go,’ says Dr. Anthony Fauci
Dec 09, 2022
Omicron completely changed everything we thought we knew about COVID-19 when it unexpectedly emerged a year ago and rapidly spread around the world within weeks — and there’s still so much uncertainty around what it could do next.
The devastatingly infectious variant upended our prior understanding of what the virus was capable of and how to effectively control it, and opened the door to previously unheard of levels of COVID-19 transmission, seemingly overnight.
“Omicron was a giant step in the wrong direction of where we wanted to go,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the U.S. President, told CBC News in an interview.
“It was highly significant in changing the pandemic because it really was quite different from the emergence of other variants which actually were in many respects closely related [to each other],” he added. “Omicron was a truly aberrant variant … it veered way off.”
