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Those with and without masks make their way down the bustling Oxford Street in London, UK, on Saturday. The UK government has reinstated an indoor masking mandate due to spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. (AFP/Yonhap News)

The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is more transmissible than other variants because it shares a portion of its genetic code with a virus that causes the common cold, research findings show.

This has led some analysts to be optimistic, as they predict that the variant may not be fatal to humans, like the common cold. But experts cautioned that it would be premature to let our guard down too much before the findings go through peer review.

The Washington Times and other sources reported on Friday that researchers at the US biomedical analysis company Nference had reported the discovery of a snippet of genetic code from a common cold virus while sequencing the Omicron variant.

The researchers found that the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) could also be transmitted to people infected with the coronavirus HCoV-229E, which causes the common cold.

On this basis, they concluded that the Omicron variant may have first occurred in someone simultaneously infected with the COVID-19 virus and a cold virus. In particular, they suggested that the two viruses may have swapped genetic information while reproducing in cells in the patient’s lungs and gastrointestinal system.

Genetic code associated with HCoV-229E or other common cold viruses was not found in previous COVID-19 variants.

Bioengineer Venky Soundararajan, founder of Nference and a co-author of the study, said the “striking” similarity between the Omicron variant and a common cold virus could have made it “more accustomed to human hosts,” which explains how it could have survived more efficiently in the human body and spread.

The research findings are still in preprint and have not yet been peer reviewed, which means that they will still need to undergo closer scrutiny. But the preliminary findings are attracting notice for the interesting implications they offer on how the Omicron came to be so transmissible.

The question that remains is what kind of effect the virus has on the human body. Typically, viruses that evolve to become more transmissible tend to lose properties that lead to severe symptoms. But the prevailing view among experts is that more time will be needed to see whether that is the case with Omicron.

Soundararajan said more data and analysis would be needed to reach any conclusions on whether Omicron will follow the same pattern.

Since it was first reported in South Africa, the Omicron variant has spread throughout the world, owing to its high transmissibility.

In South Africa, the number of new daily confirmed cases had skyrocketed from 2,465 on Nov. 25 to 16,055 on Dec. 3 — an increase of 6.5 times. During that same period, Omicron cases accounted for over 70% of new patients, establishing it as the dominant variant in South Africa by a large margin.

Appearing on Bloomberg Television on Friday, Anthony Fauci, the top US expert on infection diseases, sounded a cautious note on the observation that severe COVID-19 cases have not risen in South Africa even as Omicron infections have skyrocketed.

The trend is “comforting but not definitive,” he stressed.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

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