Back

Insights into the limited global spread of the immune evasive SARS-CoV-2 variant Mu

Petrone, M. E.; Lucas, C.; Menasche, B.; Breban, M. I.; Yildirim, I.; Campbell, M.; Omer, S. B.; Ko, A.; Grubaugh, N.; Iwasaki, A.; Wilen, C. B.; Vogels, C. B. F.; Fauver, J. R.

2022-03-30 epidemiology
10.1101/2022.03.28.22273077 medRxiv
Show abstract

SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern (VOCs) continue to reshape the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, why some VOCs, like Omicron, become globally dominant while the spread of others is limited is not fully understood. To address this question, we investigated the VOC Mu, which was first identified in Colombia in late 2020. Our study demonstrates that, although Mu is less sensitive to neutralization compared to variants that preceded it, it did not spread significantly outside of South and Central America. Additionally, we find evidence that the response to Mu was impeded by reporting delays and gaps in the global genomic surveillance system. Our findings suggest that immune evasion alone was not sufficient to outcompete highly transmissible variants that were circulating concurrently with Mu. Insights into the complex relationship between genomic and epidemiological characteristics of previous variants should inform our response to variants that are likely to emerge in the future.

Matching journals

The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.