Scientists say it will take weeks to tell how dangerous Omicron really is. Here's why

[superadmin]

(CNN)As soon as South Africa announced the spread of a new and troubling variant last week, scientists went to work.

By the time the World Health Organization had named the new lineage Omicron, multiple teams of researchers had already duplicated the work of the laboratories in Durban and elsewhere, and mapped out the genetic changes that made Omicron the new bad actor of the coronavirus family.

Although many of those mutations were familiar from other variants, scientists still were not sure whether they make Omicron substantially different from previous variants -- especially the super-dominant Delta variant.

It will take weeks of testing to tell what added superpowers, if any, these mutations give Omicron.

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