Masks, vaccines, boosters, rapid tests and anti-Covid pills will all be essential in the months ahead.

ast week, we learned from virus sequencing and rapid reporting by South African scientists that there is a new variant with 50 mutations compared with the original Wuhan strain. It quickly was named Omicron and categorized as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization, a designation that hasbeen used for only four previous variants (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta) among thousands of variants noted in the evolution of the Sars-CoV-2 virus.

Read the full article in The Guardian.