Dear Medi Trippers I’m sure by now many of you would have heard a new mutant strain has been detected in South Africa. At the time of writing, the Omicron strain has not been detected in or near East Africa or Tanzania. What do we know so far? Most viruses – including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 – evolve over time. This will always happen as long as the virus exists. When a virus replicates or makes copies of itself, it sometimes changes a little bit, which is