They are calling for broader vaccination now, while today’s shots are still working.
“The faster Omicron spreads, the more possibilities there are for mutation, which could potentially lead to more variants,” said Leonardo Martinez, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University.
Since it appeared in mid-November, the omicron has been running across the globe like fire through dry grass. Research shows that the variant is at least twice as contagious as delta and at least four times as contagious as the original version of the virus.
Along with keeping relatively healthy people out of work and school, the ease with which the variant spreads increases the chances that the virus will infect and linger in people with weakened immune systems – giving it more time to develop potent mutations.
“It’s the longer, persistent infections that seem to be the most likely breeding ground for new varieties,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University. “It is only when you have a very widespread infection that you will allow it to happen.”
That’s a possibility, experts say, given that viruses do not spread well if they kill their hosts very quickly. But viruses do not always become less deadly with time.
A variant could also achieve its main goal – to replicate – if infected people developed mild symptoms in the beginning, spread the virus by interacting with others and then became very ill later, Ray explained as an example.
“People have wondered if the virus will develop into mildness. But there is no particular reason for that,” he says. “I do not think we can be sure that the virus will become less deadly over time.”
Gradually getting better at avoiding immunity helps a virus survive long-term. When SARS-CoV-2 first struck, no one was immune. But infections and vaccines have given at least some immunity to large parts of the world, so the virus has to adapt.
Another potential route: When both Omicron and Delta circulate, people can get dual infections that can give birth to what Ray calls “Franken variants,” hybrids with characteristics of both types.
As new varieties evolve, scientists said it is still very difficult to know from genetic traits which ones may take off. For example, Omicron has many more mutations than previous variants, about 30 in the tip protein that allow it to bind to human cells. However, the so-called IHU variant, identified in France and monitored by the WHO, has 46 mutations and does not appear to have spread much at all.
Anne Thomas, a 64-year-old IT analyst in Westerly, Rhode Island, said she is fully vaccinated and boosted and is also trying to stay safe by mostly staying home while her state has one of the highest cases. of COVID-19 in the United States.
“I have no doubt at all that these viruses will continue to mutate and we are going to deal with this for a very long time,” she said.
Ray compared vaccines to armor for humanity, which greatly prevents viral spread, though it does not completely stop it. For a virus that spreads exponentially, he said, “anything that slows down the transmission can have a big effect.” Also, when vaccinated people get sick, Ray said their disease is usually milder and disappears faster, giving less time to create dangerous varieties.
Experts say the virus will not become endemic like the flu as long as global vaccination rates are so low. At a recent press conference, WHO Director – General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that protecting humans from future variants – including those that may be fully resistant to today’s shots – depends on ending global vaccine inequality.
Tedros said he would like to see 70 percent of the population in each country vaccinated by the middle of the year. Currently, there are dozens of countries where less than a quarter of the population is fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. And in the United States, many people continue to resist available vaccines.
“These huge unvaccinated shards in the United States, Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere are fundamentally different factories,” said Dr. Prabhat Jha from the Center for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “It has been a colossal failure in global management that we have not been able to do this.”
Meanwhile, new variants are inevitable, said Louis Mansky, director of the Institute of Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota.
With so many unvaccinated people, he said, “the virus still has some control over what goes on.”
