The Covid-19 epidemic is nearing its close, judging by the conditions in countries worldwide. But the omicron variant never ceases evolving.
The World Health Organization named new Covid-19 variations per the degree of harm an infection may bring to a human. But until it significantly impacts people, the WHO has yet to give the newest Covid-19 omicron variation a name.
The Covid-19 variant development may have started to wane, as many in the scientific community now dispute. Some people might react positively. Scientists in the fields of biology, virology, and immunology disagree.
“SARS-CoV-2 is continuing to evolve extremely rapidly. There’s no evidence that the evolution is slowing down,” said a biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Trevor Bedford.
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The omicron variant of Covid
Since the virus spread over the world three years ago, scientists designated several viral strains. This covers a variety of varieties, such as alpha, beta, and gamma. The omicron variant, nevertheless, dwarfs the Covid-19 forms’ capacity for evolution. So researchers looked at the virus in its more virulent version and found that it doesn’t appear to be waning. Although the implications are still unknown, the omicron split into various subvariants.
“The children of omicron — so the many direct children and cousins within the diverse omicron family — those have displaced each other. But that same family (dominates other variants),” explained Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist from the University of Bern.
“We seem to be seeing evidence of widescale convergent evolution for the first time. We have what people are calling a swarm of omicron viruses, which have different ancestries within omicron, but which have the same set of mutations,” added Manon Ragonnet-Cronin of the University of Chicago.
Its ability to transcend the immunity people developed from their vaccinations sets up a more perilous situation for countries that have just recently recovered from the effects of the lockdowns.
“When you see convergence in evolution, that’s evolution’s way of saying, ‘this mutation is repeatedly getting selected over and over again because it’s really helpful,'” said Jesse Bloom, a biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
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What constitutes a better outcome
As the omicron variety continues to evolve, experts anticipate a better conclusion. Theoretically, omicron may develop into the common flu over time, with consequences that do not render it any more harmful than it already is.
“The fact that we’ve perhaps stepped out of a phase [in the pandemic] where we’re getting completely new viruses from different parts of the tree sweeping in and dominating might be a sign that we’re moving towards a more kind of stable future for the virus,” Hodcroft added.
However, the unpredictable nature of viruses has scientists keeping a tight eye. For example, specialists are still trying to predict if a brand-new, better-armed variation would appear from existing ones.
“We are dealing with a completely novel virus here. And we don’t know how many other paths this particular virus might have. We don’t know at this stage,” said Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research.
“I guarantee you that there are people who have been persistently infected with delta and alpha who have some weird combinations of mutations. And I’m fully prepared for a delta-based or alpha-based omicron-like event where one of those zombie viruses that’s been cooking away within someone emerges,” concluded Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona.
Photo Credit: DW
Source: NPR
Opinions expressed by Texas Today contributors are their own.
