What is the “COVID-22 variant” and should Americans be concerned?

Twitter users expressed concern after the term “COVID-22” began appearing on the social media site on Tuesday, and the professor who used it clarified his comments to News week.

Seeing the term trending, users responded with tweets and memes about what some perceived to be a brand new type of coronavirus.

Experts said News week that the term is incorrect and that “COVID-22” does not exist.

The term appears to have been coined by Sai Reddy, professor of synthetic immunology at ETH Zurich, a public research university in Switzerland.

In an interview with a German language newspaper seen On August 22, Reddy discussed the potential for the emergence of future COVID variants that could be worse than others the world has experienced so far – a reasonable concern echoed by others as well.

Reddy then described the delta variant as “more COVID-19” and called it “COVID-21” instead.

He added, translated from German: “This is the next phase of the pandemic when Beta or Gamma becomes more infectious or Delta develops escape mutations. That will be the big problem for the coming year. Covid -22 could get worse than what we are. Testify now. “

The quote has since been picked up by other news outlets with headlines warning of a new variant called “COVID-22” which could be even worse than delta.

But Professor Jeremy Rossman, Honorary Lecturer in Virology at the University of Kent, said it was incorrect to label COVID variants in this way and said there was no such thing as COVID-22. .

He said News week: “The criteria for a new variant called COVID-22 are not yet defined; however, it would probably need to be a new species of the virus and not just a new variant. For reference, we only have one species of COVID-19 right now. “

Even with the current variants of COVID, scientists have not identified a genetic mutation that has made the virus an entirely new species, so the terms COVID-22 or COVID-21 are needed. Rossman added that we may never use terms like these.

Mark Harris, professor at the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Leeds, echoed this point, calling the term COVID-22 “unnecessary and inaccurate”.

He said News week: “COVID is the abbreviation for Coronavirus Disease. The virus that causes it is SARS-CoV-2.

“Delta is not COVID-21 or a variant of COVID-19 – it is a variant of SARS-CoV-2. All future variants will also be SARS-CoV-2.”

Professor Reddy clarified his comments on Wednesday in a statement to News week, noting that he did not expect such a reaction on social media.

He said: “I of course agree that the proper and correct use of the term for the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 is COVID-19. I unfortunately did not realize that my use of the term” COVID-21 “or” COVID-22 ‘would lead to such a reaction.

“What I meant was that as SARS-CoV-2 literally evolves, our thinking on how to respond and deal with the pandemic should change as well.”

Reddy said countries around the world have moved from strict lockdowns to relaxed measures and in some cases have reverted back to strict lockdowns again.

He added, “Now that we start thinking about 2022, we need to think again about how to respond to COVID-19. My thoughts mentioned above make it clear that increasing immunization and access to vaccination is the most important priority. “

Terminology aside, concerns about future variations are very real, Rossman said.

“Regardless of the denomination, there is a real risk of future variants. Every time the virus infects someone, it changes a bit,” he said. News week.

“Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen the virus change, become more and more transmissible. More recently, we have seen variants that have started to escape the protection provided by vaccines somewhat.

“It is likely that these trends will continue in the future, with the variants possibly continuing to become more transmissible and more immune.”

Harris also said people should be concerned about future variants and that ensuring equal access to vaccines around the world “would reduce the prevalence of the virus and thus reduce the chances of new variants emerging.”