A deep dive into the omicron variant’s origin

First discovered a year ago in South Africa, the SARS-CoV-2 variant later dubbed “omicron” spread across the globe at incredible speed. It is still unclear exactly how, when and where this virus originated. Now, a study published in the journal Science by researchers from Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin and a network of African institutions shows that omicron’s predecessors existed on the African continent long before cases were first identified, suggesting that omicron emerged gradually over several months in different countries across Africa.