IT is almost a year to the day since the UK's Covid vaccination drive launched on December 8 when Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old grandmother in Coventry, became the first person in the world to be immunised outside of a clinical trial.
Within weeks it became clear that a highly transmissible new variant later dubbed Alpha, which had spread from Kent, would slow the return to normality and cause thousands of extra Covid deaths in the process during a devastating winter wave.
Twelve months later, many scientists believed the virus had evolved into its 'peak' form with the subsequent rise of Delta, a strain which crushed and outcompeted all others wherever it took hold.
Now, having amassed half a Greek alphabet of variants already, the world is faced with a new unknown: Omicron.
READ MORE: Omicron 'most challenging' development in months, warns Sturgeon
Like the first 'variant of concern' Alpha, it shares a marker - the S-gene dropout - which enables potential cases to be detected quickly in PCR testing before being confirmed through genomic sequencing.
Surveillance indicates that these 'S-drop' cases began rising from November 16, though not all were Omicron. Those that are, are concentrated in Lanarkshire and Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
Could COP26 have seeded the new variant into the west of Scotland? The first know case of Omicron was detected in Botswana in a specimen collected on November 9 - three days before the summit ended - but the variant had almost certainly been spreading in Africa for weeks.
So far contact tracing has found no link.
However, there is evidence of community transmission - described as "limited" at this stage - since at least some of Scotland's confirmed cases cannot be traced to travel.
For now, governments at Holyrood and Westminster are steering clear of the curfews, hospitality closures, and circuit breakers that characterised the battle with Alpha.
READ MORE: 'A dramatic change from everything we have seen': Why the new Covid variant has scientists scared
Vaccines may not have put an end to Covid as we wished, but immunity is still much higher than it was and boosters - not lockdown - will be the first line of defence, bolstered by surveillance and sequencing to find cases, tougher rules on travel (hotel quarantine for red list countries and PCR testing for all arrivals), and 10 days of self-isolation for anyone identified as a close contact of someone infected with Omicron - even if fully vaccinated.
Whether this will be enough depends on a lot of unknowns: its transmissibility; whether and how well it can escape vaccines; whether it causes more severe disease; and to what extent Omicron has already spread in the UK.
It also depends on us: is the public willing to "step up" compliance enough, or has apathy set in?
Whatever the answers, we will probably know them by Christmas.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel