The scientist who first detected the new strain of the COVID-19 virus variant said on Friday that he is concerned about how fast it appears to have accumulated its unusual pattern of mutations. Dr. Sikhulile Moyo, a director for the Botswana Harvard HIV Reference Laboratory and a research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the speed at which Omicron is mutating also raises further questions about how it evolved and just how transmissible it may be. In a briefing, Moyo explained that viruses don’t typically accumulate mutations in a single step but that a lack of adequate sequencing of the coronavirus has made it difficult for scientists to understand just how early the new variant developed. “We are still trying to understand how so many mutations arose for Omicron in a short space of time,” Dr. Moyo said. “If you look at the previous lineages, if you look at Alpha, if you …