Photo Credit: Dani Machlis / BGU
Dr. Karin Yaniv at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

The Omicron variants may burn themselves out in the next couple of months and the Delta variant might reemerge, Israeli scientists warned this week.

The findings of the study by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev are published in the peer-reviewed journal Science of the Total Environment.

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The World Health Organization announced this week that it estimates nearly 15 million people were killed either by the coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, mostly in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.

While Delta wiped out the variants that preceded it, Omicron has not eliminated Delta, said Prof. Ariel Kushmaro and Dr. Karin Yaniv.

Prof. Kushmaro’s lab team has developed sensitive arrays that can differentiate variants from each other in wastewater.

Wastewater continues to give indications of where the coronavirus is active, even when PCR and rapid testing of people declines.

The researchers monitored Beer-Sheva’s sewage from December 2021 to January 2022 and noticed the disturbing interaction between the Omicron and Delta variants.

They also built a model with Prof. Rony Granek, which predicts Omicron is burning itself out while Delta is just biding its time.

“Of course, there are a lot of factors involved, but our model indicates there could be another outbreak of Delta or another coronavirus variant this summer,” Prof. Kushmaro warned.

Additional researchers included Dr. Eden Ozer and Marilou Shagan from Ben-Gurion University, and Dr. Yossi Paitan from Ilex Labs.

Prof. Kushmaro and his team are part of the School of Sustainability and Climate Change and the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering.

The research was supported by the BGU Coronavirus Challenge and the Israeli Ministry of Health.

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Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.