Why It Could Take ‘Two Weeks’ To Learn If Omicron Impacts COVID-19 Vaccines

Whenever a fresh coronavirus variant emerges, the public often hungers for answers. What could it mean for my family? My job? My health?

Since the omicron variant was first reported, the common response from health experts — cited across CNN to The New York Times to NPR — is that it could take “two weeks” to know whether immunity and vaccine protection will remain effective against this new threat.

Why two weeks? A fortnight is a weirdly specific timeframe?

The main reason behind the wait is that a legion of virologists need this time to tease apart omicron's attack patterns. This new variant's large amount of mutations has made this work harder than it typically is. Omicron has about 50 mutations — twice as many mutations overall as delta.

Also contributing to the delay is the lag time between catching the virus and being hospitalized. It typically takes about seven to 12 days. Most of the early omicron cases were spotted in college students who developed mild disease, according to their doctors. But younger adults are way less likely to experience severe COVID, and wave after wave has taught us that these youths also tend to be on the leading edge of surges. So, these early cases do not offer much clarity on omicron’s severity.

“I was completely shocked and surprised to see the number of mutations,” said Dr. Ned Landau, a microbiology professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. “It took me a while to figure out that this was for real.”

Landau is leading one out of the hundreds of labs that is working with the World Health Organization to determine if omicron can bypass our immunity. After meeting with the WHO on Monday morning, Landau walked WNYC/Gothamist — step-by-step — through what goes into the process and why it will take about 14 days.

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