![]() ![]() By May – just one month later – the BA.2.12.1 subvariant had become dominant in the U.S. The BA.2 variants’ stay at the top of the coronavirus food chain, was brief, however. by the BA.2 variant and had become the dominant coronavirus variant around the world. ![]() and other countries hard – producing the most coronavirus infections ever.īy April, though, the BA.1 variant had been supplanted in the U.S. At the beginning of this year, BA.1 Omicron variant hit the U.S. Instead, with the emergence of the Omicron virus, it’s turned into a mutating machine. Last year I read an op-ed that suggested that the coronavirus was probably close to exhausting its ability to mutate. (Thankfully, no “ variants of high consequence“, which produce increased rates of hospitalization/death, a significant reduction in vaccine effectiveness, and/or may be more difficult to detect, are circulating now.) A Mutation Machine Variants of concern increase transmissibility, produce a more severe disease, are better at evading the antibody response, are not knocked down as well by treatments or vaccines, or are harder to detect. Today, only one lineage of variants of concern – the Omicron variants and subvariants – is being watched now. Many variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have been found, but since the Delta variant showed up in Oct 2020, only six have been considered “ variants of concern“. The protrusions are the spike proteins the virus uses to infect cells). (Electron microscope picture from the NIAID. ![]() The coronavirus has been evolving rapidly over the past 6 months. ![]()
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