As this latest version of SARS-CoV-2 sweeps the planet, pandemic-weary people everywhere are asking the same question: Is society doomed to confront a succession of new viral variants, each one more contagious than the last?
On March 22 the World Health Organization announced that the Omicron subvariant BA.2 had become the dominant form of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, worldwide. BA.2 shares many genetic similarities with its close relative BA.1, which fueled a global resurgence in COVID infections in recent months. But BA.2 is between 30 percent and 50 percent more contagious than BA.1.
The Omicron subvariants were all detected around the same time last November in South Africa. These new and dramatically different versions of SARS-CoV-2 were jolting to many scientists, who had anticipated that the next major variant would descend incrementally from the Delta variant. BA.1 quickly overtook Delta as the dominant strain worldwide, while BA.
According to Baric, Omicron is the first SARS-CoV-2 variant to evolve in the context of mounting immunity in the population—the result of vaccines and prior infection with other forms of the virus. Earlier variants, namely Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, competed for dominance primarily on the basis of how well they infect human cells in high numbers and transit efficiently among people.
Fortunately, evidence so far indicates that disease symptoms caused by BA.2 are not more severe than those caused by BA.1 in vaccinated people or people who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to Sasisekharan.
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