Happy Birthday, Omicron

The World Health Organization announced that a new variant of the coronaviruses had been found in southern Africa. A record-breaking surge in cases was caused by it.

Omicron has biologists scrambling to keep up with its evolution. The variant is getting more and more common. It has exploded into hundreds, each with resistance to our immune defenses and its own name, like XBB, BQ. 1.1 and CH. 1.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle has a virologist who says it is hard to remember what he is talking about.

It's more difficult for scientists to plan new vaccines and treatments if there's a lot of subvariants.

He said it would always be the same. There will always be some new variant out there.

Omicron had more than 50 changes that made it different from other coronaviruses. The idea that it came from a single person is favored by many researchers.

A group of scientists at the University of Minnesota said last month that an early form of the coronaviruses had been found in mice. It evolved into Omicron in the rodents and then into humans again.

Omicron became dominant in the weeks after it was discovered because of its genes. The virus was able to slip inside cells more easily. Some let it get away from the immune system.

The majority of antibodies block coronaviruses from entering our cells. Some of the most potent antibodies were no longer able to stick to it because of the changes made to the spikeProtein by Omicron.

It continued to change as Omicron increased in size. For the first few months, the new versions replaced each other like waves on a beach. The first version, BA.1, was replaced by the second version, BA.2, and the fifth version, BA.5.

Theodora Hatziioannou and her colleagues ran an experiment in February that suggested Omicron was ready for an evolutionary explosion.

Dr. Hatziioannou's team was able to block the variant by using 40 different antibodies. It was possible for a few extra changes to make it resistant to almost all of them.

There was no effect on the resistance of the coronaviruses when the researchers added the same mutations to the spikeProtein. Dr. Hatziioannou thought that the large number of new changes in Omicron made it easier to evolve even more resistance.

She said that they were concerned when they saw it.

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The viruses are getting a big evolutionary edge due to the rapid build up of the new mutations. In the first year of the Pandemic, most people had no immunity. Most people do. It's easy for viruses that have extra resistance to out compete others that don't.

Sergei Pond is a researcher at Temple University in Philadelphia.

A singlevariant is not gaining all of the new changes. More than 180 Omicron subvariants are being tracked by Ben and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute.

Charles Darwin recognized convergence 160 years ago. Birds and bats are very similar in their evolution of wings. The Omicron subvariants are escaping the same antibodies with the same spots on their spikes.

Competition in the subvariant swarm may be preventing one of them from taking over. In the US, the once dominant BA.5 now accounts for just 19 percent of new cases. BQ.1 has gone up to 28 percent. The cause of 29 percent is a descendant of B. Q. 1. There are 13 other Omicron subvariants.

Other subvariants are moving to the top. XBB is a hybrid of two different subvariants of BA.2. In most parts of the world, XBB is not common.

Most of that has to do with which area was sown first, according to Thomas Peacock.

There are less types of antibodies that work against them. XBB and three other subvariants became resistant to the antibodies in blood samples from people who had Covid infections, according to a report last month.

One of the most important defenses against Covid is at risk. In order to create these treatments, scientists collected blood of Covid patients and isolated their most potent antibodies. People with compromised immune systems can be prevented from getting infections. Treatments will no longer work as resistance increases.

Dr. Bloom, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, said that he couldn't be sure if or not monoclonal antibodies would play a major role in treatment. It will be important to design another generation of cocktails that stand up.

The original version of the virus is produced by the booster shots. Studies show that people who have gotten the bivalent booster are more likely to have neutralizing BQ. 1.1 and other new subvariants than people who haven't gotten it. Many of the bivalent antibodies can be evaded by the sub-variants.

The new subvariants don't seem to be as deadly as the earlier ones. Dr. Hatziioannou said that the subvariants won't be able to completely escape immunity from vaccines or previous infections.

The lessons scientists are learning about Omicron's convergence may allow them to predict its evolution. Predicting the next stage of Covid could allow public health officials to be more prepared.

It has made me hopeful for the future. One could get ahead of the game.