National Institutes for Health Director Dr. Francis Collins on Nov. 29 stated that while the Omicron variant of COVID-19 should be taken “seriously,” whether the new variant will outcompete the delta variant in the United States remains to be seen. “What we do know, it has a lot of mutations, more than 50, that’s a new record,” Collins told CNN when asked about the Omicron variant. “Some of those we’ve seen before and some we haven’t. So this certainly suggests that this is a new kind of virus that we have to take very seriously.” While Collins expressed concerns about antibodies—generated from a vaccine or from a natural infection—that potentially “won’t stick quite as well” to spike proteins of a “different shape” on the mutated variant Omicron, he still urged Americans to get vaccinated. “That’s a very important message I want everybody to hear right now,” he said. “The boosters do …