COVID’s Turbo-Mutation Is Killing This Vax Dream, So What’s Next?
Two months after scientists in South Africa alerted the world to the new, highly transmissible Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, the global surge in infections resulting from the variant is finally subsiding.
To be clear, exhausted health-care workers in overcrowded hospitals are still fighting to save lives. But many epidemiologists are beginning to look ahead to a post-Omicron world.
The pandemic experts The Daily Beast spoke to were unanimous. Omicron is not the end. New variants–“lineages” is the scientific term–are coming. Worse, a host of entirely new coronaviruses lurk in animal populations and could make the leap to human beings at any time, seeding a whole new pandemic after or on top of COVID-19.