Scientists: omicron will not be the last worrying variant

Get ready to learn more Greek letters. Scientists warn that the dizzying spread of omicron all over the world practically guarantees that it won’t be the last worrying variant of the coronavirus.

Each infection offers an opportunity for the virus to mutate, and ómicron has an advantage over its predecessors: it spreads much faster despite having emerged on a planet with a mosaic of stronger immunity, either from vaccines or from people who already have been sick before.

That means there are more people in whom the virus can continue to evolve.

Experts don’t know how the next variants of the pandemic might evolve, saying there’s no guarantee that omicron sequelae will cause milder disease or that existing vaccines will work against them.

Therefore, they urge expanding vaccination now, while current injections remain effective.

“The faster omicron spreads, the more opportunities there are for mutations, which could lead to more variants,” warns Leonardo Martínez, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University.

Since it emerged in mid-November, the omicron has spread across the world like fire through dry grass. Research shows that this variant is at least twice as contagious as the delta and at least four times as contagious as the original version of the virus.

While attacking unvaccinated people, the omicron variant is more likely than the delta variant to reinfect those who have already fallen ill with COVID-19 and to cause “creeping infections” in vaccinated people. The World Health Organization reported a record 15 million new cases of COVID-19 for the week of January 3-9, a 55% increase from the previous week.

In addition to keeping relatively healthy people out of work and school, the ease with which the new variant spreads increases the chances that the virus will infect and remain inside people with weakened immune systems, giving it more time to develop powerful mutations.

“It is the longer and more persistent infections that seem to be the most likely breeding grounds for new variants,” says Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University. “Only when someone has a very widespread infection will it provide an opportunity for that to happen.”

Because omicron appears to cause less severe illness than delta, its behavior has raised hopes that it could be the start of a trend that will ultimately make the virus milder, like that of a common cold.

Experts say that’s a possibility, since viruses don’t spread well if they kill their hosts very quickly. But viruses don’t always become less deadly over time.

A variant could also achieve its primary goal, replication, if infected people initially developed mild symptoms, spread the virus by interacting with others, and then became severely ill, Ray explains, by way of example.

“People wonder if the virus will evolve and become less potent, but there’s no particular reason why it should,” he added. “I don’t think we can be sure that the virus will become less lethal over time.”

A virus can survive long-term by helping itself to get progressively better by evading immunity. When SARS-CoV-2 first hit, no one was immune, but infections and vaccines have given much of the world at least some immunity, so the virus has had to adapt too.

There are many possible pathways for the virus to evolve. The animals could potentially hatch and release new variants. Domestic dogs and cats, deer and farm-raised mink are just a few of the animals vulnerable to the virus, which can potentially mutate within them and return to people.

Another potential route: With the huge circulation of omicron and delta variants, people can get double infections that could lead to what Ray calls “Frankenvariants,” hybrids with characteristics of both types.

Scientists say that when new variants are developed, it is still very difficult to tell from genetic characteristics which ones might take off to new heights. For example, ómicron has many more mutations than the previous variants, around 30 in the spike protein that allows it to adhere to human cells, but the so-called IHU variant identified in France and supervised by the WHO has 46 mutations and does not seem to have spread. much.

To stop the appearance of variants, scientists insist on continuing with public health measures, such as the use of masks and vaccination. While omicron is better able to evade people’s immunity than delta, experts add, vaccines still offer protection, and booster shots greatly reduce serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths.

Anne Thomas, a 64-year-old IT analyst, says she has the full schedule of shots and boosters, but also tries to stay safe by mostly staying home while her state, Rhode Island, has one of the lowest rates. highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country.

“I have no doubt that these viruses will continue to mutate and we are going to be dealing with this for a long time,” he says.

Ray likened vaccines to armor for humanity that greatly hinders, if not completely stops, viral spread. For a virus that spreads exponentially, he said, “anything that slows transmission can have a big effect.” Also, when vaccinated people do get sick, Ray said their illness is usually milder and goes away faster, leaving less time to generate dangerous variants.

Experts say the virus will not become endemic like the flu as long as global vaccination rates are so low. During a recent press conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that protecting people from future variants, including those that may be completely resistant to current vaccines, hinges on ending global inequity in of vaccines.

Tedros said he would like to see 70% of people in all countries vaccinated by the middle of the year. Currently, there are dozens of countries where less than a quarter of the population is fully vaccinated, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University. In the United States, many people continue to resist vaccines, despite their wide availability.

“These huge unvaccinated swaths in the United States, Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere are basically variant factories,” says Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “It has been a colossal failure in global leadership that we have not been able to resolve this.”

In the meantime, new variants are inevitable, warns Louis Mansky, director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota.

With so many people unvaccinated, he says, “the virus is still in control of what’s going on.”