World events have taken many people’s minds off COVID, but the virus is completely undeterred by any human preoccupation, and continues to follow evolution’s bidding one mutation at a time. I thrive on optimism, but you would have to be unusually optimistic, and also dead wrong, to assume we are not in for another winter surge in SARS2-Cov19 disease. In the previous post I highlighted the rapid increase in a variant HV.1 which is slowly eclipsing EG.5 in the US. Both of these are in the XBB lineage, and there is good data to confirm that, either infection with a variant from this family, or the new monovalent booster will increase protection from severe disease for those at high risk. But there may be a fly in the oatmeal, a curveball to the corner, or a new kid on the block, which changes the game.
Thanks Jeff, excellent issue as usual. Can you tell us how viral groth advantage is determined for a particular variant?