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    The scientist in Botswana who identified omicron was saddened by the world's reaction

    He and his team were stunned by the number of mutations. They felt they'd made a contribution by alerting the world to a dangerous variant. Then came the travel bans for residents of southern Africa.
    by Melody Schrieber Dec 16, 2021 5 minutes
    Sikhulile Moyo, the laboratory director at the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership and a research associate with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, headed the team that identified the omicron variant.

    When the Botswanan scientists saw the sequences, they were stunned.

    Four international travelers had tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 11, four days after entering the country. But when the cases were genetically sequenced, where the genetic code of the virus is analyzed to look for worrying changes, the scientists discovered a variant they had never encountered before.

    And soon, they alerted the world to what would become known as the omicron variant.

    The team in Botswana was headed by Sikhulile Moyo, the laboratory director at the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership and a research associate with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Moyo is quick to give credit to his entire team, and to scientists working simultaneously on similarly alarming sequences in South Africa, for the discovery of omicron.

    He spoke with NPR about

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