President Joe Biden said Friday that he is planning to request more money from Congress to develop another new coronavirus vaccine, as scientists track new waves and hospitalizations rise, though not like before

  • 30mag@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Viruses mutate, and COVID has mutated continuously since it has been in the wild

    How many variants of covid are there?

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Currently, at least 5 main lineages, with several sub-lineages among Omicron, at least. Wikipedia only marks Omicron as a variant of concern right now, and the others are considered out of circulation among the general population. I couldn’t find WHO data easily on their website, however.

      • Silverseren@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I kinda dislike what the WHO has done with Omicron though. It has had so many lineage variants over the past year that we should have had 4-5 official new named variants by this point, but they seem to be avoiding doing that for some reason.

        So we’re dealing with unofficial sub-names now with the currently rising Eris variant and the emerging Pirola variant.

        They are so genetically different from Omicron at this point that they make Omicron look like the same lineage as Delta.

        So, yeah, it’s been aggravating me that they haven’t been officially recognizing these still ongoing pandemic variants.