Omicron’s Spread Across Hotel Hall Highlights Transmission Worry

The omicron variant spread among two fully vaccinated travelers across the hallway of a Hong Kong quarantine hotel, underscoring why the highly mutated coronavirus strain is unnerving health authorities.

Closed-circuit television camera footage showed neither person left their room nor had any contact, leaving airborne transmission when respective doors were opened for food collection or Covid testing the most probable mode of spread, researchers at the University of Hong Kong said in a study published Friday in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Omicron, with an “unprecedented” number of mutations in the spike protein, has raised concern that it could evade ...