How many relevant SARS-CoV-2 variants might we expect in the future?

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Abstract

Objectives

The emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants is a major challenge in the management of Covid-19 pandemic. A crucial issue is to quantify the number of variants which may represent a potential risk for public health in the future.

Methods

We fitted the data on the most relevant SARS-CoV-2 variants recorded by the World Health Organization (WHO). The function exploited for the fit is related to the total number of infected subjects in the world since the start of the epidemic.

Results

We found that the number of new relevant variants per ten million cases diminished by 30.4% between March 2020 and March 2022 (from 1.25 to 0.87). However, the decrease is now very slow and a further reduction by 10% would happen only for 5.6 billion infections in the world, i.e. ten times the cases from the beginning of the epidemic up to June 2022.

Conclusion

Our simple mathematical model can provide an estimate of the number of relevant SARS-CoV-2 variants as the cumulative number of cases increases worldwide and may represent a useful tool in planning strategies to effectively contrast the pandemic.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.17.21266463: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


    About SciScore

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