Omicron – doomsday or blessing in disguise? 

Alex Salmond speaks to Dr Angelique Coetzee, the Pretoria GP who first identified the Omicron variant – and who informed the world (based on her practical experience of patients) that the new variant, while hyper-infectious, was much milder in health impact than the deadly Delta variant. Meanwhile, Prof Hugh Montgomery of UCL warns policymakers that it is not inevitable that further new variants will necessarily be less potent, and urges a fundamental reassessment of humanity’s interaction with nature, which is provoking the emergence of deadly contagions from the animal kingdom.