https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03445-6
"Some call it a swarm of variants — others refer to it as variant soup.
Whatever it’s called, the current crop of immunity-dodging offshoots of the
Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is unprecedented in its diversity. This
complexity makes it harder to predict coming waves of infection. It might even
lead to a ‘double wave’ in some places, as first one variant and then another
overtakes a population.
But amid the chaos, patterns are emerging. The swarm has helped scientists to
pinpoint a handful of immunity-evading mutations that power a variant’s spread.
Globally, a few heavyweight variants have emerged, yielding different outcomes
in different regions — at least, so far.
In Europe, North America and Africa, the prevalence of Omicron offshoots in the
BQ.1 family is rising quickly, even as overall cases seem to fall. In Asian
countries including Singapore, Bangladesh and India, a lineage called XBB has
already set off fresh waves of infection. Scientists are closely watching
several regions where both are circulating, to see which has the edge.
“In the end, probably, some variants are going to dominate, but it’s less
decisive than it was in the past,” says Cornelius Roemer, a computational
biologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
