Some social media accounts are claiming new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 stopped appearing all of a sudden. This is false. New variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 continue to be discovered and monitored by health officials around the world and by the World Health Organization as the virus continues to mutate.
Some and users posted questions about why new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 stopped appearing recently. The users said it's odd that new variants of the COVID-19 virus are not being reported anymore. The Twitter posts were shared by several accounts since early April.
"Anyone else find it odd we stopped having new variants all of a sudden?"
"Did we just all of a sudden stop having new variants? Haven’t heard anything about Covid much lately. That’s odd,"
Rating: False
The WHO says new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are discovered and monitored by the organization.
"All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, change over time," the . "Most changes have little to no impact on the virus’s properties. However, some changes may affect the virus’s properties, such as how easily it spreads, the associated disease severity, or the performance of vaccines, therapeutic medicines, diagnostic tools, or other public health and social measures."
The WHO identifies COVID-19 virus variants before designating them as variants of concern and variants of interest based on their ability to circulate and replace prior variants, and potential to cause new waves of the disease.
"The Omicron viruses account for over 98% of the publicly available sequences since February 2022 and constitute the genetic background from which new SARS-CoV-2 variants will likely emerge," the
The organization has been assigning names from the Greek alphabet to COVID-19 virus variants of concern and variants of interest since 2021. It has not assigned a new Greek label to any of the virus variants since it named Omicron in November 2021 because Omicron and its subvariants have been dominating the virus circulation around the world since then.
Last month, the WHO updated its COVID-19 tracking system to allow the classification of Omicron sublineages independently as variants under monitoring, variants of concern or variants of interest.
The organization says its previous virus monitoring system classified all Omicron sublineages as part of the Omicron variant of concern.
The WHO has also updated the variant-of-concern definition to include major SARS-CoV-2 mutations that require major public health interventions.
The organization will only assign Greek labels for variants of concern, and will no longer do so for variants of interest.
Tracking genetic mutations
, an international network that aims to make virus data quickly accessible, has listed new COVID-19 virus mutations in dozens of countries since the start of April.
The initiative used data submitted by 210 countries to analyze and compare almost eight million Omicron genome sequences.
On April 19, at least 20 countries shared genome sequences of new COVID-19 virus samples with the initiative, including Brazil, India, Slovakia and Japan.
Canada, China, Australia and France are among the countries that shared data with the initiative on April 18.
The Public Health Agency of Canada works with provincial and territorial health authorities and the ´ºÉ«Ö±²¥ COVID-19 Genomics Network to by sequencing a percentage of all positive COVID-19 test results.
"Sequencing reveals the genetic code of the virus, which tells us which variant is involved in a specific case of COVID-19," the agency says.
"We report the proportion of COVID-19 variants in Canada every week."
As of April 14, the agency's data show that Omicron subvariant XBB. 1.5 continues to be the most circulating variant in Canada as other Omicron subvariants continue to emerge in the country.
Sources
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