Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada.
Curr Biol. 2021 Jul 26;31(14):R918-R929. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.049. Epub 2021 Jun 23.
One year into the global COVID-19 pandemic, the focus of attention has shifted to the emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs). After nearly a year of the pandemic with little evolutionary change affecting human health, several variants have now been shown to have substantial detrimental effects on transmission and severity of the virus. Public health officials, medical practitioners, scientists, and the broader community have since been scrambling to understand what these variants mean for diagnosis, treatment, and the control of the pandemic through nonpharmaceutical interventions and vaccines. Here we explore the evolutionary processes that are involved in the emergence of new variants, what we can expect in terms of the future emergence of VOCs, and what we can do to minimise their impact.
全球 COVID-19 大流行一年后，人们的关注焦点已转移到出现和传播令人关注的 SARS-CoV-2 变异株（VOC）上。大流行近一年以来，对人类健康几乎没有产生任何进化变化，而现在已经发现几种变体对病毒的传播和严重程度具有重大的不利影响。此后，公共卫生官员、医务人员、科学家和更广泛的社区一直在争先恐后地了解这些变体对通过非药物干预和疫苗进行诊断、治疗和控制大流行意味着什么。在这里，我们探讨了新变体出现所涉及的进化过程，我们可以期待未来出现 VOC 的情况，以及我们可以采取哪些措施来尽量减少它们的影响。
