Timeline of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

This timeline of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (November 2021 – February 2022) is a dynamic list, and as such may never satisfy criteria of completeness. Some events may only be fully understood and/or discovered in retrospect.

November 2021

4 November

South African scientists begin seeing samples where PCR tests have S-gene target failure (which occurs in a few variants, but not in Delta which had by far dominated in the country in October), alerting them to a change in epidemiology.

8 November

The first confirmed sample of what would eventually be named the Omicron variant by the World Health Organization (WHO) is collected in South Africa.

9 November

Other samples of the Omicron variant are collected in Botswana by South African scientists under the aegis of Network for Genomic Surveillance South Africa (NGS-SA).

14–23 November

More than 70 percent of sequenced samples from Gauteng province in South Africa are Omicron, indicating that it already has become the dominant variant in the province.

24 November

South Africa makes its first report of B.1.1.529 (as it is scientifically known) to WHO, based on samples that had been collected from 14 to 16 November.

25 November

The variation first comes to public notice at a virtual press conference called by the Health Department of South Africa. Richard Lessells, an infectious-diseases physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, remarked that "There's a lot we don't understand about this variant... The mutation profile gives us concern, but now we need to do the work to understand the significance of this variant and what it means for the response to the pandemic." Professor Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand said of the pace of this research that "we're flying at warp speed".