Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
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.

PubMed Disclaimer

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.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Leung K, Shum MH, Leung GM, Lam TT, Wu JT. Early transmissibility assessment of the N501Y mutant strains of SARS‐CoV‐2 in the United Kingdom, October to November 2020. Euro Surveill. 2021;26(1):2002106. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Makoni M. South Africa responds to new SARS‐CoV‐2 variant. Lancet. 2021;397:267. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Faria NR, Mellan TA, Whittaker C, et al. Genomics and epidemiology of the P.1 SARS‐CoV‐2 lineage in Manaus, Brazil. Science. 2021;372:815‐821. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Tian D, Sun Y, Xu H, Ye Q. The emergence and epidemic characteristics of the highly mutated SARS‐CoV‐2 Omicron variant. J Med Virol. 2022;2022(4):2376‐2383. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Tian D, Ye Q. Hepatic complications of COVID‐19 and its treatment. J Med Virol. 2020;92:1818‐1824. - PMC - PubMed

Supplementary concepts

  NODES
Project 1
twitter 2