New Era in Pandemic: Multiple variants at once

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In the early stages of the pandemic, a few variants of concern easily gained an evolutionary advantage and spread easily around the world.
When variants such as Alpha, Delta emerged, they easily spread around the world.
One variant easily outperformed the other variant in a population and caused a new wave of Covid.

However, Beta and Gamma variants could not spread to the whole world due to the faster transmission of the Alpha variant.

The Alpha variant was destroyed by the Delta variant.

 

But after Omicron, the number of variants of concern started to increase. Most of these variants are very contagious; we are now watching the evolutionary race of different variants.

BA.1.1, BA.2, BA.2.2, BA.2.8 and now BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5.


BA.2.2 had a chance to spread in Hong Kong, BA.2 had a chance to spread in England, and BA.2.8 had a chance to spread in Scotland; and then serious waves were seen around here.

For a variant to cause a surge in a population, it must first take root in that population to a certain level.
However, now variants such as BA.4, BA.5, BA.2.12.1 are competing with each other to spread, and since none of them are fully dominant variants, we do not see waves as often as before.

 The data we can present as an example of this situation comes from the USA and Portugal.

The USA was about to be under the influence of a new wave, as BA.2 was the dominant variant. However, with the emergence of the BA.2.12.1 variant, the increase in the BA.2 ratio stopped and the wave was delayed. Then the rate of variant BA.2.12.1 started to increase and the wave gained momentum again.

Now there is a serious Covid wave caused by BA.2.12.1 in the USA. According to the estimation made about this wave, the actual number of cases may be 30 times higher than the case detected.

However, BA.4 and BA.5 variants have started to appear in some parts of the USA and the proportion of these variants is increasing.

If the rates of BA.4 and BA.5 variants continue to increase, they may stop variant BA.2.12.1. And this may cause the current Covid wave to slow down.

The BA.5 variant, on the other hand, had a chance to spread in Portugal.

What's going on here is; The BA.5 variant is the only dominant variant and therefore BA.5 is causing a new wave in Portugal. Here, we see that the BA.2.12.1 and BA.4 variants could not beat the BA.5 variant and could not become the dominant variant.

With the rate of the BA.5 variant, the speed of the Covid wave is increasing. The number of cases and hospitalizations began to increase rapidly.

 









Abdulkadir YILMAZ
Intern Virologist/ University of Ankara


Resources
CoVariants
COVID-19 Data Explorer - Our World in Data
‘We’re playing with fire’: US Covid cases may be 30 times higher than reported | Coronavirus | The Guardian


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