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
. 2022 Apr;16(2):196-207.
doi: 10.1007/s11684-021-0906-x. Epub 2022 Mar 6.

SARS-CoV-2 variants, immune escape, and countermeasures

Yi Zhang  1 , Haocheng Zhang  1 , Wenhong Zhang  2   3
Affiliations
Review

SARS-CoV-2 variants, immune escape, and countermeasures

Yi Zhang et al. Front Med. 2022 Apr.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic disease. SARS-CoV-2 variants have aroused great concern and are expected to continue spreading. Although many countries have promoted roll-out vaccination, the immune barrier has not yet been fully established, indicating that populations remain susceptible to infection. In this review, we summarize the literature on variants of concern and focus on the changes in their transmissibility, pathogenicity, and resistance to the immunity constructed by current vaccines. Furthermore, we analyzed relationships between variants and breakthrough infections, as well as the paradigm of new variants in countries with high vaccination rates. Terminating transmission, continuing to strengthen variant surveillance, and combining nonpharmaceutical intervention measures and vaccines are necessary to control these variants.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; breakthrough; immune escape; prevention; vaccine.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Zhou P, Yang XL, Wang XG, Hu B, Zhang L, Zhang W, Si HR, Zhu Y, Li B, Huang CL, Chen HD, Chen J, Luo Y, Guo H, Jiang RD, Liu MQ, Chen Y, Shen XR, Wang X, Zheng XS, Zhao K, Chen QJ, Deng F, Liu LL, Yan B, Zhan FX, Wang YY, Xiao GF, Shi ZL. A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. Nature. 2020;579(7798):270–273. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Su S, Wong G, Shi W, Liu J, Lai ACK, Zhou J, Liu W, Bi Y, Gao GF. Epidemiology, genetic recombination, and pathogenesis of coronaviruses. Trends Microbiol. 2016;24(6):490–502. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2016.03.003. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wu F, Zhao S, Yu B, Chen YM, Wang W, Song ZG, Hu Y, Tao ZW, Tian JH, Pei YY, Yuan ML, Zhang YL, Dai FH, Liu Y, Wang QM, Zheng JJ, Xu L, Holmes EC, Zhang YZ. A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. Nature. 2020;579(7798):265–269. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2008-3. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kim D, Lee JY, Yang JS, Kim JW, Kim VN, Chang H. The architecture of SARS-CoV-2 transcriptome. Cell. 2020;181(4):914–921.e10. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.011. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Telenti A, Arvin A, Corey L, Corti D, Diamond MS, García-Sastre A, Garry RF, Holmes EC, Pang PS, Virgin HW. After the pandemic: perspectives on the future trajectory of COVID-19. Nature. 2021;596(7873):495–504. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03792-w. - DOI - PubMed

Substances

Supplementary concepts