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Review
. 2023 Jan;95(1):e28138.
doi: 10.1002/jmv.28138. Epub 2022 Sep 21.

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron lineages, immune escape, and vaccine effectivity

Yongbing Zhou  1 , Huilin Zhi  2 , Yong Teng  1
Affiliations
Review

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron lineages, immune escape, and vaccine effectivity

Yongbing Zhou et al. J Med Virol. 2023 Jan.

Abstract

As of November 2021, several SARS-CoV-2 variants appeared and became dominant epidemic strains in many countries, including five variants of concern (VOCs) Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron defined by the World Health Organization during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of August 2022, Omicron is classified into five main lineages, BA.1, BA.2, BA.3, BA.4, BA.5 and some sublineages (BA.1.1, BA.2.12.1, BA.2.11, BA.2.75, BA.4.6) (https://www.gisaid.org/). Compared to the previous VOCs (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta), all the Omicron lineages have the most highly mutations in the spike protein, and with 50 mutations accumulated throughout the genome. Early data indicated that Omicron BA.2 sublineage had higher infectivity and more immune escape than the early wild-type (WT) strain, the previous VOCs, and BA.1. Recently, global surveillance data suggest a higher transmissibility of BA.4/BA.5 than BA.1, BA.1.1 and BA.2, and BA.4/BA.5 is becoming dominant strain in many countries globally.

Keywords: BA.2; BA.5; SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant; immune escape; vaccine effectivity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Spike mutations affect the biological behavior of five SARS‐CoV‐2 Omicron lineages. Blue, BA.1 has an additional six amino acid deletions, three insertions, and nine substitutions compared to BA.2; Red, BA.1.1 contains unique mutation R346K compared to BA.1; Green, BA.2 has eight specific mutations compared to BA.1, BA.1.1, BA.3, BA.4, and BA.5; Purple, BA.2.12.1 contains unique mutation L452Q + S704F compared to BA.2; Yellow, BA.4 and BA.5 have specific del69‐70, L452R, F486V, R493Q compared with BA.2; Black, all Omicron lineage have 20 identical spike mutations.
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