TWiV reviews findings that increased fitness of the Omicron variant is due to immune evasion, not an increase in intrinsic transmissibility, and determination of infectious viral load in patients infected with wild type, Delta and Omicron viruses reveals lack of correlation with RNA loads determined by RT-PCR, similar levels of shedding among Delta and Omicron, and greatly reduced shedding in vaccinated people.
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, Kathy Spindler, and Brianne Barker
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Show notes at microbe.tv/twiv
Early Wuhan genome compared with later genomes from many other countries ( It’s In The GenBank – 2).
New RNA sequencing techniques may help (Direct RNA Sequencing of the Coding Complete Influenza A Virus Genome)