Clues to next variant are all around us

WHEN scientists in South Africa noticed an uptick in Covid-19 cases in the Gauteng Province last November, they began investigating the source. These researchers and others in Botswana quickly discovered the Omicron variant and heroically shared their discovery with the rest of the world. And yet it was still too late - Omicron was already rapidly infecting people across the globe.

The question for a world enduring the variant's astonishing surge is how can we discover the next one early enough to stop its spread. Currently, the hunt for coronavirus variants is too slow and sporadic. Scientists in a handful of countries - South Africa, Botswana, the United States and others - monitor patterns in case counts and regularly sequence samples of the virus from infected people to see whether there are notable genetic changes. The results of these analyses can be shared within a global network, such as GISAID, an international community of scientists who openly share data on disease variants, to compare coronavirus sequences from around the world.

By the time this happens, variants are often already spreading in a community and most likely beyond it. This analysis process is like testing every piece of hay in a stack to see whether it's a needle - or, really, the equivalent of choosing and testing just 1 per cent of the haystack.