Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Beyond Omicron: what’s next for COVID’s viral evolution

The rapid spread of new variants offers clues to how SARS-CoV-2 is adapting and how the pandemic will play out over the next several months.
  1. Ewen Callaway
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

An abstract phylogenetic tree with some virus shapes changing form along it

Illustration by Ana Kova

As the world sped towards a pandemic in early 2020, evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom gazed into the future of SARS-CoV-2. Like many virus specialists at the time, he predicted that the new pathogen would not be eradicated. Rather, it would become endemic — the fifth coronavirus to permanently establish itself in humans, alongside four ‘seasonal’ coronaviruses that cause relatively mild colds and have been circulating in humans for decades or more.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 600, 204-207 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03619-8

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 05 January 2022: An earlier version of this story had incorrect information about the R0 of seasonal coronaviruses and polio in comparison to SARS-CoV-2. These comparisons have been removed.

References

  1. Eguia, R. T. et al. PLoS Pathog. 17, e1009453 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Volz, E. et al. Cell 184, 64–75 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Peacock, T. P. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.28.446163 (2021).

  4. Liu, Y. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.12.456173 (2021).

  5. Kistler, K. E., Juddleston, J. & Bedford, T. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.11.459844 (2021).

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links