Why the COVID-19 variants might stretch the pandemic into 2024

Coronavirus ICU in Brazil.
(Image credit: TARSO SARRAF/AFP via Getty Images)

Last week, New York provided a worrisome breakdown of what's happening in the Brazilian city of Manaus, whose population had previously been thought to have built up widespread protection against the virus last year, only to find itself experiencing another major outbreak. There are theories as to how this happened — community immunity being overestimated, waning antibody protection, the variant becoming more transmissible, or, perhaps most concerning, the virus adapting to evade antibodies.

Whatever the case, an increasing number of variants like the one in Brazil could theoretically push the end game back. Axios put it in slightly different terms — the current pandemic may be nearly over, but the variants could spark new ones.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.