Omicron variant is more transmissible but vaccines are still effective

Professor Rafael Najmanovich and his team have applied their modelling of possible variations of the virus responsible for COVID-19 to investigate the Omicron variant. Last summer, a team of researchers at Université de Montréal succeeded in modelling the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 , the virus responsible for COVID-19, and simulating more than 17,000 possible mutations on a computer. Using their computer-generated model, the researchers have now determined that the Omicron variant is more transmissible but not likely to cause serious health problems in people who have a strong immune response to the variants already present in the population. Spike proteins are the pointy protusions on the surface of the virus. When they are in the "open" state, the virus is able to bind to human cells and initiate an infection. "We know that in the original virus the spike proteins are in the closed state 75% of the time and in the open state 75% of the time," explained project lead Rafaël Najmanovich, a professor in UdeM's Department of Pharmacology and Physiology and a specialist in molecular design and computational structural pharmacology. "In Omicron, the spike proteins are in the open state a much greater proportion of the time than in any other variant.