Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yachtold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visitacolkot.co.j.j.

That's y-A-K-U-L-T-C-O-J-P.

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

Hi and welcome to COVID quickly, a Scientific American podcast series. This is your fast-track

update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent

questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand

what it really means. I'm Josh Fishman, Scientific American's senior health editor. Tanya Lewis,

usually right here with me, is taking a well-deserved day off. Today, we'll be talking

omicron, particularly how vaccines and boosters protect against the new variant, and we'll sum up what Americans have done this year to keep themselves and their communities safe.

All right, you've been seeing headlines about Omicron every day now for three weeks since it was first detected.

It's scary stuff. It's now in 60 countries. Travel has been restricted. School districts are seeing big outbreaks, and some colleges seeing sudden huge spikes in cases are ending their semesters with remote learning. Clearly, this is not how we wanted to end the year. People are really on edge. Now we're getting some real-world data on what Amicron does and what vaccines do against it.

Maybe that can take a bit of the edge off.

It is now clear, however, that the variant spreads very fast.

In the United Kingdom, cases are doubling every three days, scientists at the UK's

Health Security Agency reported.

In South Africa, it's become the dominant variant, overtaking delta.

That speed is going to mean high numbers of cases. And lots of cases mean that even if a

higher portion of them are milder than we saw with other variants, some are going to be serious.

If the overall amicron caseload is high, the serious portion of those cases is going to be a big number.

...