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Israeli doctor believes he caught Omicron variant of Covid in London
A doctor who was one of the first people in the world to become infected with the Omicron variant says he believes he caught the virus when he was in London for a major medical conference attended by more than 1,200 health professionals.
The disclosure from Elad Maor will raise fears that the variant may have been in the UK much earlier than previously realised – and that other medics could have been exposed to it too.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Maor, a cardiologist at Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv, described how he returned to Israel on 23 November after the three-day meeting at ExCeL London, a large convention centre in Newham, east London. He began experiencing symptoms within days, and tested positive on 27 November.
The time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) is thought to be up to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within five days of exposure.
Maor has so far shown mild COVID-19 symptoms, including a fever, muscle ache and a sore throat.
The revelation will raise fresh questions about how early the new variant may have been present in the UK and Europe. Governments around the world are urgently scouring databases for recent cases of Covid infections, screening travellers and decoding the viral genomes of the new variant as they try to measure how far it has spread and where it originated.
Source: The Guardian, 1 December 2021