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Variants of Covid-19: many suitors, few chosen

2021-11-28T13:35:38.437Z


ANALYSIS - Fifth "variant of concern" in the WHO classification, Omicron worries. Thousands of variants exist, but few prosper.


It was finally a short time ago, but it already seems a long way off.

On December 16, 2020,

Le Figaro

headlined: "Covid-19: should we be worried about the mutant circulating in the south-east of England?"

We then recalled that it was normal for viruses to mutate because they constantly make mistakes by replicating themselves.

Sometimes, but rarely, the appearance of a mutation gives the virus a selective advantage that allows it to thrive or even replace an older strain.

Thus, out of the thousands of known mutations in Sars-CoV-2, the virus that carries the Covid-19 disease, a few variants have emerged, but they can literally be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Read alsoCovid-19: can closing the borders stop the Omicron variant?

The first of them was therefore “

English

”, as they said at the time, and in mid-December astonished a United Kingdom which was then quite optimistic since, after the first two epidemic waves (the peaks of which took place on 14 April and 28 November ), the country had started its first injections of the vaccine against the Covid on December 8, well before the other European countries, and thanks to this campaign it intended to mitigate the harmful effects of a third wave which seemed inevitable in January or February 2021 Alas, it was not.

The Kent variant was originally

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Source: lefigaro

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