New virus, new wave of covid

2022-05-12T04:26:31.077Z

Data predicts a next wave for the latest omicron variants Anyone who wants to know the future of the covid pandemic would do well to look at South Africa. Not because various forms of SARS-CoV-2 have emerged there that have later spread around the planet, but also, but above all because of the level of its epidemiological investigation, the work of committed scientists who have put the harsh truth before diplomatic discretion. . Thanks to them, we have j

Anyone who wants to know the future of the covid pandemic would do well to look at South Africa.

Not because various forms of SARS-CoV-2 have emerged there that have later spread around the planet, but also, but above all because of the level of its epidemiological investigation, the work of committed scientists who have put the harsh truth before diplomatic discretion. .

Thanks to them, we have just learned that the famous waves of covid are linked to the appearance of new variants that have been gaining in infection capacity and ability to evade the immune system.

This strongly indicates that the evolution of the virus consists of an

arms race.

between SARS-CoV-2 and our antibodies, a classic evolutionary mechanism.

The shell of the crab gets thicker and thicker so that a lobster doesn't eat it, and the lobster's claws get bigger and bigger to keep eating the same as before.

In the body of a patient who survives covid, the antibodies become more and more effective and the virus more and more elusive.

law of life

The initial waves of 2020 were due to the original Wuhan strain and a few others derived from it.

The one for the winter of 2020-2021 is linked to the beta variant, which was replaced by the delta for the waves of 2021. At the end of 2021, when the matter seemed to be on track, the omicron variant emerged, which came in two flavors or sub-variants , BA.1 and BA.2.

And now it is the turn of BA.4 and BA.5.

Each new variant spreads more than the previous one, and better evades human antibodies.

Unsurprisingly, BA.4 and BA.5, the latest designs in viral evolution, are exceptionally elusive to our immune systems.

And they are starting to rise in South Africa and parts of Europe.

Everything indicates that a new wave will come, this time caused by SARS-CoV-2 or micron BA.4 and BA.5.

But calm: there is no indication that these two strains will cause an increase in severe cases and hospitalizations.

The immunity of the population, either by vaccination or by previous infection, does little to prevent contagion, but it protects the infected person from developing severe covid.

Some scientists half-jokingly say that an omicron wave can be seen as a natural vaccination campaign.

Of course, people with low defenses—immunodeficient in the worst case, immunocompromised in the not-so-bad—do well to protect themselves from contagion for now.

It is difficult to predict what the virus can do to them, and not even vaccines guarantee them the same protection as the general population.

Virologists have traced a family tree of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.

It reveals, for example, that neither alpha nor beta nor gamma nor omicron are daughters of delta, but that they come from other strains coeval with delta, but different from it.

This dispels the mysticism that has surrounded omicron until now: it did not fall from the sky six months ago, but was revealed later than previous variants.

All this knowledge is helping to identify which specific mutations are behind the high spread and escape from the immune system.

The data presented here is not yet peer-reviewed.