The latest Covid variant, Omicron, has dampened the festive mood as the year draws to a close. And despite official warnings from scientists from South Africa and Botswana — two countries where the variant had earlier been detected and shown to be highly transmissible — this new threat continues to outsmart existing vaccines, although symptoms appear to be quite mild. Pharmaceutical companies have found themselves back at square one as they rush to come up with a formula that will be effective in suppressing the strain’s spread as once-novel routines of hygiene and social distancing become nor…

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