COVID-19 mutations make pandemic trajectory unpredictable, experts say

COVID-19's ongoing mutations make the trajectory of the pandemic unpredictable, experts say, as nations get ready to battle the new Omicron variant.

Putting an end to the COVID-19 pandemic will mean priming the immune systems of everyone on Earth but the virus is spreading quickly and may take years to “settle down,” says an infectious disease specialist.

Just as some scientists started to voice the idea that COVID-19 might have reached the peak in its evolution with Delta and people began taking steps to learn how to live with the virus, a new variant struck. Omicron has been identified in several parts of the world.

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Toronto, said while vaccines are extremely important, strong political leadership and policy is what will help bring COVID-19 under control, a strategy reinforced by the emergence of the Omicron variant.

“I’m just guessing here, but what’s likely going to happen is this virus is not going to go away for a long, long, long time,” he said in an interview.

Prof. Mark Brockman, a virologist at Simon Fraser University, said COVID-19 takes over human cells and instructs them to make more viruses. Sometimes errors or typos occur in the duplication process, producing new variants.

“There’s been so many people around the world who have been infected with the virus, that we’ve given it a lot of opportunity to make mutations, and even very, very rare mutations,” he said.

Coronaviruses don’t mutate as quickly as others, Brockman said, noting hepatitis C and HIV change much more readily.

But that slower rate of evolution is offset by worldwide infections, giving the virus millions of chances to become more transmissible, he noted.