A twitter account by the name Stacey Rudin, having 20K Followers claims that the WHO statement that the “Omicron” was first reported by South Africa on 11/24/21 is not right. WEF has reported this same variant-B.1.1.529, out of South Africa- way back in July.
It can be seen this tweet has received around 4K retweets, 645 Quote Tweets and 7K Likes.
Fact Check:
On analyzing the tweet thread, which this account has posted to prove the point that WEF has reported the “Omicron” variant in South Africa. It was seen a World Economic Forum report is attached with it.
On opening that report, it is clearly mentioned that “This article was originally published on 12 July 2021. It was updated on 26 November to include information about the new strain, B.1.1.529.”, which tells that the information about B.1.1.529 strain was added on 26 November, 2021 in the old article that was published on 12 July, 2021.
To further clarify that the information regarding the new mutant of Coronavirus i.e., B.1.1.529 was not present in the article published on 12 July, 2021. We found out the archived version of that report, which clearly shows that in the article published on 12 July, 2021, it does not have any information about new coronavirus strain, B.1.1.529.
Hence, the above information spread by a twitter account of Stacey Rudin is fake and misleading.