Researchers at universities and government agencies in the Netherlands found that Omicron would count as the first of a new group of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. Whereas previous variants cluster in a single group
, but how much? Since SARS-CoV-2 was first sequenced at the beginning of 2020 dozens of strains have been identified. And five have been designated “variants of concern” by the World Health Organisation . The latest of these is Omicron, which was given its name in November last year. As Omicron becomes dominant around the world, working out how to
from it is becoming more pressing. To do this, scientists must study how different this strain is from those that came before and what that means for immunity, from both previous infection and vaccination.A daily newsletter with the best of our journalismOne question occupying scientists and politicians is whether vaccines would work even better if they were updated to deal with new strains.
Researchers at universities and government agencies in the Netherlands acquired blood samples collected from 51 unvaccinated people shortly after they had been infected with various strains of SARS-CoV-2. These were the original, referred to as the “ancestral strain”, as well as the later Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants.
By measuring the antibody responses of the serum of each individual against the various variants, the researchers were able to position both the viruses and the serum samples on an “antigenic map”, which is used to study how mutations make viruses more or less different from the ancestral strain over time, in a process known as “antigenic drift”. In such maps a one-unit distance is equivalent to a two-fold change in neutralisation titre . Samples plotted closer together are more similar.
A preprint of this research was uploaded to medRxiv, a research portal, on January 3rd but has not yet been peer-reviewed. And the authors of the study have also cautioned that their methodology varied slightly from that conventionally used to map influenza. Nevertheless they conclude that “the change in neutralisation between Omicron and other variants of SARS-CoV-2, including the ancestral strain, is striking.
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