Global estimates of the fitness advantage of SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron.

ABSTRACT: New variants of SARS-CoV-2 show remarkable heterogeneity in their relative fitness over both time and space. In this paper we extend the tools available for estimating the selection strength for new SARS-CoV-2 variants to a hierarchical, mixed-effects, renewal equation model. This formulation allows us to estimate selection effects at the global level while incorporating both measured and unmeasured heterogeneity among countries. Applying this model to the spread of Omicron in forty countries, we find evidence for very strong but very heterogeneous selection effects. To test whether this heterogeneity is explained by differences in the immune landscape, we considered several measures of vaccination rates and recent population-level infection as covariates, finding moderately strong, statis

SUBMITTER: van Dorp C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9615435 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature