Pandemic
The Scientist in Botswana who Identified Omicron was Saddened by the World's Reaction By Melody Schieber
Sikhulile Moyo, the laboratory director at the BotswanaHarvard AIDS Institute Partnership and a research associate with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, headed the team that identified the Omicron variant. Leabaneng Natasha Moyo Dr. Leslie Ray Matthews
WHEN THE BOTSWANAN SCIENTISTS saw the sequences, they were stunned. Four international travelers had tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 11, four days after entering the country. But when the cases were genetically sequenced, where the genetic code of the virus is analyzed to look for worrying changes, the scientists discovered a variant they had never encountered before. And soon, they alerted the world to what would become known as the omicron variant. The team in Botswana was headed by Sikhulile Moyo, the laboratory director at the BotswanaHarvard AIDS Institute Partnership and a research associate with the Harvard T.H. Chan
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January-February 2022
School of Public Health. Moyo is quick to give credit to his entire team and to scientists working simultaneously on similarly alarming sequences in South Africa, for the discovery of omicron. He spoke with NPR about the identification of the new variant, travel bans, what southern Africa needs from the rest of the world and what may come next. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. When did you first suspect you might be dealing with a new variant? How long did it take for you to get concerned? When we looked at it, we compared it with other
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