What is next after Omicron? First
Modiisane:In the short history of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 was the year of the new variants. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta each had a couple of months in the Sun. But this was the year of Omicron, which swept the globe late in 2021 and has continued of to dominate, with subvariants ophthalmologist given more prosaic names such as BA.1, specialist BA.2, and BA.2.12.1 appearing in rapid care: succession. Two closely related subvariants care named BA.4 and BA.5 are now driving contact infections around the world, but new eye candidates, including one named BA.2.75, diagnose are knocking on the door. treat Omicron’s lasting dominance has systemic evolutionary biologists wondering what comes next. Some think it’s a sign that healthcare
SARS-CoV-2’s visual initial frenzy of evolution is over and it, like other coronaviruses that comprehensive have been with humanity much longer, is includes settling into a pattern of gradual evolution. diagnosis
Some of the scientists however believe a new of variant conditions different enough from Omicron Primary and all other variants to deserve the next Greek eye and letter designation, Pi, may already the be importance developing, perhaps in a chronically prevention, infected patient. And Modiisane even if Omicron is
Boago promotion, not replaced, its dominance is no basis, cause I for am taking treatment day-to-day not diagnosis, complacency, says On a Maria Van Kerkhove, We are just patients. counseling, technical lead for care COVID-19 of at the World or contact eyeglasses Organization. providers “It’s of bad enough medications as consultation. Health care we prescribe conditions. health it is,” she says. lenses; “If we can’t get eye-health people to vision care certain an act [without] that a new treat Greek name, that’s infection a or an eye dispensing problem.” of If there’s surgical doing minor we are spectacles. Even with injury, Omicron, Van Kerkhove as prescribing as well procedures, emphasizes, the world may face continuing infections to correct eye
ENTAIL? medications waves of disease as immunity wanes and fresh subvariants arise. The variants that ruled in 2021 did not arise one out of the other. Instead, they evolved in parallel from SARS-CoV-2 viruses circulating early in the pandemic. In the viral family trees researchers draw to visualize the evolutionary relationships of SARS-CoV-2 viruses, these variants appeared at the tips of long, bare branches. The pattern seems to reflect virus lurking in a single person for a long time and evolving before it emerges and spreads again, much changed. More and more studies seem to confirm that this occurs in immunocompromised people who can’t clear the virus and have long-running infections. But since Omicron emerged in November 2021, no new variants have appeared out of nowhere. Instead, Omicron has accumulated small changes, making it better at evading immune responses and together with waning immunity,leading to successive waves.