Reports of a heavily mutated coronavirus variant first surfaced in late November after a flurry of baffling genomes was uploaded to a global database.
Omicron, as it came to be known, was traced back to a disparate set of cases: university students in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, a diplomatic mission in Botswana and a South African traveller in a Hong Kong quarantine hotel.
As health officials worldwide try to contain the rapid spread of the variant, which has been detected in more than 50 countries on six continents, scientists continue to puzzle over its origins.
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