It was 26 November 2021 that WHO declared that the world was facing a new variant of concern: Omicron. It would go on to change the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic.Emerging evidence was quickly shared by scientists from Botswana, Hong Kong and South Africa and discussed in a special meeting of WHO’s Technical Advisory Group for Virus Evolution (TAG-VE).Experts at the meeting worried about the large number of mutations present in this variant, which differed greatly from the other variants that had been detected so far. Early data showed Omicron’s...