An updated framework for SARS-CoV-2 variants reflects the unpredictability of viral evolution

Affiliations

• ¹ World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. [email protected].
• ² World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
• ³ Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
• ⁴ Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Research Centre, Rotterdam/Delft, the Netherlands.
• ⁵ Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar of Cornell University, Doha, Qatar.
• ⁶ European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Stockholm, Sweden.
• ⁷ World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Cairo, Egypt.
• ⁸ Imperial College London, London, UK.
• ⁹ National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa.
• ¹⁰ School of Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
• ¹¹ Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• ¹² UK Health Security Agency, London, UK.
• ¹³ National Centre for Infectious Diseases, Singapore, Singapore.
• ¹⁴ World Organisation for Animal Health, Paris, France.
• ¹⁵ Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
• ¹⁶ Charité Medical Center, Berlin, Germany.
• ¹⁷ University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
• ¹⁸ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy.
• ¹⁹ Institut de Santé et Développement, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal.
• ²⁰ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
• ²¹ African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Disease, Redeemer's University, Ede, Nigeria.
• ²² World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa, Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.
• ²³ Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
• ²⁴ Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland.
• ²⁵ World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific, Manila, the Philippines.
• ²⁶ School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, The People's Republic of China.
• ²⁷ United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA.
• ²⁸ World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark.
• ²⁹ World Health Organization Regional Office for the Americas, Washington, DC, USA.
• ³⁰ Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
• ³¹ World Health Organization Regional Office for South East Asia, Delhi, India.
• ³² Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany.
• ³³ The Pirbright Institute, Woking, UK.
• ³⁴ Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, The People's Republic of China.
• ³⁵ University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
• ³⁶ Child Health Research Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
• ³⁷ Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, The People's Republic of China.
• ³⁸ Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• ³⁹ Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
• ⁴⁰ Multidisciplinary Center for Infectious Diseases, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
• ⁴¹ Institute of Virology and Immunology, Mittelhäusern and Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
• ⁴² Institut Pasteur Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia.
• ⁴³ Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France.
• ⁴⁴ Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University, Sonipat, India.