Welcome to the inquiry, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer.

It's the middle of November and scientists in a laboratory in Botswana in Southern Africa

are examining four samples from COVID positive swabs.

When the director takes a look he sees certain patterns of mutations he's never seen before

and he's worried about what that could mean.

Within days this new COVID variant is spreading in different parts of neighbouring South Africa.

The World Health Organization quickly categorises it as a variant of concern.

Fast forward three weeks and it's been identified in more than 40 countries and at least 15 US states.

In this episode of the inquiry we're asking how will we cope with the Omicron variant?

Part one, define variant.

Our first expert witness is Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at the Yale University

School of Medicine. When I saw the mutations in the spike protein of Omicron I was shocked.

There have been a number of variants since coronavirus was first detected.

The first variant was discovered in the UK and named Alpha.

Since then the World Health Organization has been working its way through the Greek alphabet

Delta was until recently the dominant variant. Then came Omicron.

Omicron really stands out as a very far branch from all the other variants.

It really has numerous mutations and particularly the number of mutations in the spike protein itself

which is really what's used in vaccines is very high and that's what's concerning the

immunologists around the world. But you might ask why do variants occur in the first place?

Viruses copy themselves in order to spread through our systems and as they copy they make mistakes

or mutate. And when a significant number of these mutations have occurred such that the virus

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