Variant evolution appears to be declining proportional to total vaccination rate! A recent pre-print (last week) looked at the diversity of SARS-CoV-2 genomes across 183 different countries (total of 1.8 million sequences). The more diverse the lineage, the more mutations it incurred. The more mutations that occurred, the higher the chance of a concerning variant arising.
Mutations occur during replication of a virus. Viral replication can only occur when the virus has infected a host. Therefore reason stands that when our vaccination percentages increase, we are reducing the opportunity for the virus to mutate! So is this a surprise? No! Is it still great to see, yes!
The highlighted figure is looking at 5 different countries and plotting their lineage entropy versus the percentage of their population fully vaccinated. In the legend you see an “r” value which indicates the correlation coefficient (closer to 1 or -1 indicates a perfect correlation), and a “p” value which indicates how statistically significant the correlation value is based on the current data set. The US and France both show high negative correlation between lineage entropy and percent fully vaccinated that shows statistical significance. Israel, India, and UK appear to be negatively correlated but statistical significance was not reached in this particular data set.
Look through the other figures for different ways of looking at this data! It is analyzed versus time (as opposed to percent vaccinated – although they are related in this case), and they also look at mutations at an individual level as opposed to population!
Just another reason vaccinating is positive for humanity. No body no host.