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Literature Review Of Omicron: A Grim Reality Amidst Covid-19, Suraj Arora, Vishakha Grover, Priyanka Saluja, Youssef Abdullah Algarni, Shahabe Abullais Saquib, Shaik Mohammed Asif, Kavita Batra, Mohammed Y. Alshahrani, Gotam Das, Rajni Jain, Anchal Ohri

School of Medicine Faculty Publications

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first emerged in Wuhan city in December 2019, and became a grave global concern due to its highly infectious nature. The Severe Acute Respiratory Coronavirus-2, with its predecessors (i.e., MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV) belong to the family of Coronaviridae. Reportedly, COVID-19 has infected 344,710,576 people around the globe and killed nearly 5,598,511 persons in the short span of two years. On November 24, 2021, B.1.1.529 strain, later named Omicron, was classified as a Variant of Concern (VOC). SARS-CoV-2 has continuously undergone a series of unprecedented mutations and evolved to exhibit varying characteristics. These mutations have largely occurred …