How much should Australians be worried about Omicron, the new 'COVID-19 variant of concern'?

On Friday, the World Health Organisation declared the recently-discovered B.1.1.529 strain of COVID-19, first detected in southern Africa, to be a variant of concern and renamed it Omicron. The classification puts Omicron into the most-troubling category of COVID-19 variants, the globally-dominant Delta, and its weaker rivals Alpha, Beta and Gamma.

---