Omicron has completely taken over the pandemic, driving massive waves of COVID-19 in Canada and around the world in the past year. Now, scientists are trying to answer a crucial question — what could it throw at us next?
COVID levels reached new heights this year as Omicron and its highly contagious subvariants fought for dominance in the population, leading to relentless spread of the virus across the country. But as Omicron continues to mutate and produce new strains that have been shown to better evade immunity, with the potential to drive new COVID waves, scientists are warning that it may not be done with us yet.
“The challenge is, we don’t understand yet what this virus still has in store for us,” Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CBC News. “If you’ve got subvariants that can evade immune protection from previous infections and you’ve got waning immunity — that could set us up for a whole new set of circumstances.”