The emergence of new variants changes the way a virus spreads, making it more contagious, for example, as we have seen with the Delta variant of SARS-COV-2. According to experts, it is the variants of the covid coronavirus that are the big ones special guards of the moment, as the arrival of a very resistant variant to vaccines is a “real possibility”.
A study presented by the UK Scientific Emergency Advisory Group (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE) warns about virus mutations and outlines four possible future scenarios: one is desirable, but unlikely in the short term; the others would seem to be averted, but still possible.
Four scenarios. The first scenario is what sees the emergence of a new incredibly lethal variant, which kills between 10% and 35% of the infected, thus reaching the levels of the MERS (which killed one in three infected), but, unlike this, capable to combine the high lethality with the high contagiousness that covid has already shown.
For the second scenario the authors hypothesize the birth of a variant capable of evading vaccine immunity (as seems to be the case of the Epsilon, identified for the first time in California), making us go back a year in the history of the pandemic, to when no one was vaccinated.
A third hypothesis sees the development of a variant resistant to antiviral drugs – which the authors of the study recommend to administer carefully, precisely to try to contain the development of drug resistance; finally, the fourth scenario, the only positive for us, sees the virus become less infectious and more like one of the four coronaviruses we have been living with for years, such as that of the cold.
At the time of writing, dozens of variants of the covid coronavirus are known, most of which were identified in 2021. The WHO SARS-CoV-2 variant nomenclature (PDF) document is a guide to the nomenclature of virus variants, which also lists the date and country of appearance; the last variant mentioned in the document is the Kappa (India, April 2021): a more updated list, up to the Lambda (Peru, June 2021) and the variants not yet named is available on the WHO pages.
© WHO
Chance. The report highlights the possibility that traits of two aggressive variants (citing alpha, “English”, and beta, “South African” as an example) combine to create a third, more infectious and even more lethal variant. The likelihood of this happening is high, at least as long as the virus continues to circulate and find “successful formulas” to better adapt to the host (us).
According to Marc Baguelin (Imperial College London) “it is unlikely that a new virus will be able to get around totally any type of immunity, given by the overcoming of the disease or by the vaccine ». According to the expert, a minimum of immunity should remain, at least against the most serious forms of the disease: “it is however likely that we will have to update current vaccines, including emerging variants”.
We must wait. The fourth scenario, the most reassuring, is defined by the SAGE as “unlikely in the short term, but realistically possible in the long term”. If the virus changes into a less lethal and contagious form, it will take several years, or even decades, for this to happen: for the next few months it is therefore better to focus everything on mass vaccinating as many citizens as possible, and continue research to adapt vaccines. based on the new variants that we are seeing continue to arise.