Where did Omicron come from?
The highly transmissible variant emerged with a host of unusual mutations. Now scientists are trying to work out how it evolved. Little more than two months after it was first spotted in South Africa, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has spread around the world faster than any previous versions. Scientists have tracked it in more than 120 countries, but remain puzzled by a key question: where did Omicron come from? There’s no transparent path of transmission