Research: 'Omicron' is slow to multiply in cells of the nasopharynx and larynx
11:13, 10 February
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French medics have found that the 'omicron' strain is significantly inferior to the delta coronavirus in its reproduction rate. The monitoring data has been published in the digital library medRxiv.
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"The delta strain of coronavirus multiplies significantly more actively in the upper respiratory tract than the alpha variation of SARS-CoV-2, potentially explaining its increased infectivity. "We carried out similar measurements for the omicron strain and found it to be significantly inferior in this relation to the delta variation of the coronavirus," the report said.
The conclusions were based on a study of more than 120 samples obtained from carriers of the new form of SARS-CoV-2, 'omicron', and about 90 samples from carriers of the delta strain.
Follow-up experiments showed that the number of viral particles in sputum samples from people with the omicron strain was 5-7 times lower than in those infected with the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. This is evidence that this variation of coronavirus reproduces relatively poorly in cells of the human nasopharynx and larynx.
What is interesting is that such differences were most marked during the first days of infection, while they gradually became less noticeable on the following day.
According to virologists, this suggests that the increased infectivity of the omicron strain is not related to the accelerated production of viral particles but to some other characteristic that has yet to be uncovered.
soyuz.by
