Nasal or oral vaccines, more and better drugs, and a variant-proof coronavirus vaccine could catalyze a definitive pandemic exit
As the virus accelerates it evolution, the humans capitulate. For two and a half years, the virus has been outrunning our response, getting progressively more and more transmissible, reaching a level of infectiousness that few pathogens have ever attained. Instead of taking a stance of getting ahead of the virus, and out-smarting it, people have succumbed.
In recent months, we experienced a striking jump in transmissibility when the Omicron (BA.1) variant became dominant with at least a threefold increase in reproductive number beyond Delta. Despite the hope that this might be reaching the upper limit of the virus’s spread ability, we quickly transitioned to a BA.2 wave with another jump of about 30% transmissibility, and now we are heading, in the United States, to a dominant subvariant known as BA.2.1.2.1, which is 25% more transmissible than BA.2 and already accounting for close to 50% of new cases.
Eric Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine and executive vice-president of Scripps Research
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