Next COVID variant can be severe as Delta, immune evasive like Omicron: Experts answer 2 key questions
So far, no new COVID variants of concern have emerged from the dominant preceding one, but evolved from a different lineage
PremiumIn a worrying sign, scientists have suggested that the next COVID variant can cause severe infections like the Delta, Alpha variant and also show immune escape properties like the Omicron. As we step into the third year of the pandemic swinging between surges and retreat, experts assert that people can't stop speculating about what's coming next.
Will the next variant cause severe disease?
So far, no new variants of concern have emerged from dominant preceding one, but evolved from a different lineage. And there is no guarantee that the next dominant variant will descent from Omicron branch of the coronavirus family tree. “It is possible that a later variant may be back to a Delta or Alpha lineage, with sufficient immune evasion to sweep Omicron away," Andrew Rambaut, who studies viral evolution at the University of Edinburgh, UK, told scientific journal Nature.
Meanwhile, experts are still trying to understand Omicron’s relative mildness. It is still under discussion whether the mildness is due to the prevalence of immunity against SARS-CoV-2, rather than intrinsic properties of the virus itself. Moreover, as more and more people get vaccinated against COVID, yet is yet to be understood how new variants will affect us.
When will the next COVID variant emerge?
On another quivering question that is when the next variant will arrive, the study suggests there is no way to know for sure when a variant will become dominant, or whether it will rise to the status of a ‘variant of concern’.
Andrew Page, bioinformatician at the Quadram Institute in Norwich, UK, told Nature, the history of these viral dynamics suggests that a new variant will sweep through every few months.
“They seem to happen quite regularly," he says. “It’s probably just going to tick along." But whether that variant will rise to the level of a variant of concern remains an open question.
How will the next COVID variant emerge?
Another study has indicated that study that the next COVID variant can emerge in 2 different ways. “Omicron won’t be the final variant of concern. There are two likely scenarios going forward," said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, as quoted by Nature.
First, Omicron continues to evolve, creating some sort of Omicron-plus variant that is worse than BA. 1 or BA.2. The second possibility is that a new, unrelated variant appears. The latter scenario is what’s happened with each variant of concern so far.
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