Is There a Point at Which We Should Stop Obsessing About This?

Sequencing is fantastically useful because it allows you to identify what voruses are in circulation. The technique now is so sophisticated a can actually trace back the origin of where that variant is likely to have come from. Clare reminds us here that drugs companies have already made clear that vaccines can be swiftly adjusted to cope with new variants. A new vaccine could be developed within the space of about three months, because it really does need any relatively minor changes to the vaccines we already have. But of course, you don't know whether or not another variant's going to arise in the meantime. So we could be left with this for some time to come? I'm afraid we probably could, yes