Plain English - In the past, Covid mutated into different variants - Delta, Lambda, Mu variants. What makes these mutations different from one another is that when Covid mutates, sometimes it adds in new genomes and such, and other times things are lost.
Now, Covid has mutated once again into Omicron. What makes this Omicron variant different from the other variants is that Omicron has an insertion mutation (ins214EPE) added to it. That genome is found in seasonal Corona viruses - "Seasonal Corona Viruses" is a fancy name for the common cold.
How Covid gained this ins214EPE genome into it was by someone who was infected with both the common cold and Covid at the same time, and the genome was passed from the common cold virus to the Covid virus.
Meanwhile, reports out of South Africa (the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak) are finding that the vast majority, 77% of people testing positive for Omicron don't have any symptoms at all. They're only finding out they have it because they test everyone who comes into a hospital. - It doesn't matter if someone has a broken arm or cancer, everyone who walks into a hospital gets tested. - But the number, and percentage, of people testing positive does not represent the amount of people infected. Obviously the real numbers are drastically higher, because Omicron has very few symptoms and most people have no idea they're infected.
It has been found so far that the Omicron variant causes less of an immune response than the common cold. Which means that the Omicron variant is weaker, and less deadly, than the common cold. Omicron also spreads faster than Delta, and is predicted to become the dominant variant in the world.
Also, here is an excerpt from the study.
Whereas the substitution and deletion mutations have appeared in previous SARS-CoV-2 lineages, the insertion mutation (ins214EPE) has not been previously observed in any SARS-CoV-2 lineage other than Omicron. The nucleotide sequence encoding for ins214EPE could have been acquired by template switching involving the genomes of other viruses that infect the same host cells as SARS-CoV-2 or the human transcriptome of host cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. For instance, given recent clinical reports of co-infections in COVID-19 patients with seasonal coronaviruses (e.g. HCoV-229E), single cell RNA-sequencing data showing co-expression of the SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV-229E entry receptors (ACE2 and ANPEP) in respiratory and gastrointestinal cells, and HCoV genomes harboring sequences homologous to the nucleotide sequence that encodes ins214EPE, it is plausible that the Omicron insertion could have evolved in a co-infected individual.
**Plain English** - In the past, Covid mutated into different variants - Delta, Lambda, Mu variants. What makes these mutations different from one another is that when Covid mutates, sometimes it adds in new genomes and such, and other times things are lost.
Now, Covid has mutated once again into Omicron. What makes this Omicron variant different from the other variants is that Omicron has an insertion mutation (ins214EPE) added to it. That genome is found in seasonal Corona viruses - *"Seasonal Corona Viruses" is a fancy name for the common cold.*
How Covid gained this ins214EPE genome into it was by someone who was infected with both the common cold and Covid at the same time, and the genome was passed from the common cold virus to the Covid virus.
Meanwhile, reports out of South Africa (the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak) are finding that the vast majority, 77% of people testing positive for Omicron don't have any symptoms at all. They're only finding out they have it because they test everyone who comes into a hospital. - It doesn't matter if someone has a broken arm or cancer, everyone who walks into a hospital gets tested. - But the number, and percentage, of people testing positive does not represent the amount of people infected. Obviously the real numbers are drastically higher, because Omicron has very few symptoms and most people have no idea they're infected.
It has been found so far that the Omicron variant causes less of an immune response than the common cold. Which means that the Omicron variant is weaker, and less deadly, than the common cold. Omicron also spreads faster than Delta, and is predicted to become the dominant variant in the world.
[The study on what created Omicron, and how it's different, is here.](https://osf.io/f7txy/) Also, here is an excerpt from the study.
>Whereas the substitution and deletion mutations have appeared in previous SARS-CoV-2 lineages, the insertion mutation (ins214EPE) has not been previously observed in any SARS-CoV-2 lineage other than Omicron. The nucleotide sequence encoding for ins214EPE could have been acquired by template switching involving the genomes of other viruses that infect the same host cells as SARS-CoV-2 or the human transcriptome of host cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. For instance, given recent clinical reports of co-infections in COVID-19 patients with seasonal coronaviruses (e.g. HCoV-229E), single cell RNA-sequencing data showing co-expression of the SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV-229E entry receptors (ACE2 and ANPEP) in respiratory and gastrointestinal cells, and HCoV genomes harboring sequences homologous to the nucleotide sequence that encodes ins214EPE, it is plausible that the Omicron insertion could have evolved in a co-infected individual.
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