# Tulio De Oliveira

tulio de oliveira is a professor of bioinformatics who led the team that confirmed the discovery of the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus. With others he has suggested that large pools of previously-infected individuals with declining immunity directly drive the emergence of variants of concern. If simultaneously there is a high level of transmission, then declining individual immunity may fail to prevent re-infection and if the virus is not cleared in enough people, new dangerous mutations may become more likely, as the virus survives and goes on to infect more people.de Oliveira was included in a list of ten scientists who had had important roles in scientific developments in 2021 compiled by the scientific journal Nature.