Those who work in this field... is there an expected timeline for more dominant variation to emerge?

[DumplingsAndStew]

As far as I know, Delta is still the most dominant strain of covid. As viruses do, it mutates. Is there a general pattern or expected (even rough) route or timeline that this happens?

Am I right in thinking Delta has been the dominant strain for longer than any of the other variants of concern so far?

And before any of the "Oh, you're loving it, practically begging for this to continue" - positive variations also happen, and this is - of course - what I'd be hoping for.

Statistically, is it likely a less destructive variation could be due soon, or it is a complete unknown?

As far as I'm aware it's going to be dependent on the mutation rate of the virus, which is proportional to transmission levels

Alpha came out of the huge surge we had in Kent, Delta came from India's outbreak. So keeping transmission levels down is what will slow this process down, and of course even when new variants emerge they won't necessarily be able to outcompete the existing dominant strain (and we won't hear about them). For example lambda reached the UK in early August, and there was talk of it being more transmissible than delta, but it doesn't seem to be growing cases in worrying numbers.

Just my musings though, I'm sure someone more qualified will be along soon with a proper answer!

Just saw you caveated that with "those who work in field", so ignore me

www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/variants-concern

There are always variants brewing up. Whether they take hold and become predominant strains isn't really predictable.

Some have had really quite worrying levels of numbers of changes, but fortunately don't seem to have taken hold (Angola/Tanzania). The concern is that high levels of transmission in a partly vaccinated population - it sets optimum conditions for new (and vaccine escaping) variants.

In answer to your question, no!
Variants arise and succeed due to complex multifactorial selective pressures.
You can't predict the direction or timeline of natural selection in anything other than a generalised way.

Alpha came out of the huge surge we had in Kent

I thought it came from someone who had long covid and caused the huge surge in Kent.

@saltedcaramel87

Just saw you caveated that with "those who work in field", so ignore me

No worries, was more a request for those who know what they're talking about, rather than the inevitable enslaught of the "I saw a video on YouTube that says it's all a hoax anyway" comments

Your comments were informed, and helpful, so thank you 😊

Thank you for all the responses, it's pretty much as I expected, but it had been a question on my mind lately, so figured I'd ask 🙂

I get to talk to people in the know.

I work with microbiologists who are worried about scary new variants because of lots of transmissions and each one is an opportunity... but they are microbiologists who think about average mutation rates not outbreak experts; they aren't experts in outbreak evolution. It's easy to forget that betacoronaviruses have a relatively low mutation rate.

I also work with an outbreak expert/virologist (AOEV) who believe that Delta is such a good fit that it (probably) can't be hugely improved on -- the virus has limits how much it can improve its infectiousness. Why would S-C-2 mutate hugely when Delta is already so successful and has outcompeted all other variants? SARS-CoV-2 had a lot of room for 'improvement' in first 18m of infecting humans, but its evolution has slowed down hugely now (remember that Delta emerged in November 2020). Nothing is certain, but the odds are low that Delta will be beaten by a big margin by a new variant (reckons AOEV).

AOEV (goes on tv a lot) has been very spot on with predictions in last 2 months and believes things (cases, and harms) are currently on a plateau that could be sustained.
Time will tell.

SAGE have said that it is "almost certain" that we will eventually see a vaccine resistant Variant take hold.

This was mentioned in one of their reports a few weeks ago.

I'm not an expert. But it's simple to understand, the mutation happens at random, so more spread more chance of mutation, right? All the more reason to get more people to vaccinated and keep the virus under control. Sadly many people don't see it that way.