The Origins and Potential Future of SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern in the Evolving COVID-19 Pandemic

Overview

Journal Curr Biol

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Biology

Date 2021 Jul 27

PMID 34314723

Citations 179

Authors

Sarah P Otto

Troy Day

Julien Arino

Caroline Colijn

Jonathan Dushoff

Michael Li

Samir Mechai

Gary Van Domselaar

Jianhong Wu

David J D Earn

Nicholas H Ogden

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

One year into the global COVID-19 pandemic, the focus of attention has shifted to the emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs). After nearly a year of the pandemic with little evolutionary change affecting human health, several variants have now been shown to have substantial detrimental effects on transmission and severity of the virus. Public health officials, medical practitioners, scientists, and the broader community have since been scrambling to understand what these variants mean for diagnosis, treatment, and the control of the pandemic through nonpharmaceutical interventions and vaccines. Here we explore the evolutionary processes that are involved in the emergence of new variants, what we can expect in terms of the future emergence of VOCs, and what we can do to minimise their impact.

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