CNN
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In March, the White House approached a dozen Covid-19 experts who closely follow the evolution of the coronavirus to ask them a simple question: What did they think were the chances that the world would see a highly mutated variant, similar to omicron? within the next two years?
The experts came up with a surprisingly narrow range of probabilities, between 5% and 30%, according to Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. He said the data was shared with him over the phone after he gave his own estimate of 15% to 20%.
Most believed the odds would be between 10% and 20%.
Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told CNN that he was one of those experts.
He was approached by Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, for “just an informal phone conversation about my thoughts on immunity and variants and the possibility of new variants emerging. It was not an official consultative meeting, as far as I could see. It was really more of an informal discussion between colleagues, I think,” Barouch said.
“I said that there is a possibility that there is a new variant that is a fundamental change, something like Delta was to Omicron. I thought that was it, it wasn’t an infinitesimal chance, but it’s not an 80% chance either,” she said. Jha pressed him for a number, and Barouch told him, “My gut feeling is that it will be in the 20% range.”
Barouch said he was pleasantly surprised to find that most other pundits have also bet on it.
One, Dr. Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, did a very simple model based on the fact that there has been an Omicron level change in the virus in about 3 and a half years of transmission. That happened in November 2021, when the Omicron variant was first detected in the US.
Carrying that forward in time, he estimated that the risk of another such event in the next two years was higher, about 40% between now and May 4, 2025, he told CNN.
“40% feel intuitively high. The main reason why the 40% number might be off is if in today’s world Omicron-like events are now much less likely than in the world of 2020-2021. However, I see no obvious reason for this to be the case,” Bedford wrote in an email, noting that scientists are tracking highly mutated cryptic lineages in people who have been infected for long periods of time.
The calls to experts came as the Biden administration was preparing for the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency, which is scheduled for Thursday.
The White House effort to compile these expert estimates was first reported on Friday by the Washington Post.
The end of the US emergency will come with a number of changes to the way the government tracks the pandemic, with data collection less frequent in most cases and less granular. Laboratories will no longer have to submit test data to the government. Reporting of cases by states will also be discretionary.
Topol said he believes the dismantling of the data systems is a mistake, given the consensus that another highly disruptive variant could be on the way within a few years.
“I wish there wasn’t so much disappointment, because this is on the horizon, it’s a real risk,” he said.
Topol said he is also concerned about recent efforts by Congress to recover funds that have been dedicated to the coronavirus response, which some estimate could be as high as $50 billion.
About $5 billion of that unspent money has been allocated to developing the next generation of Covid-19 vaccines, which Topol says are needed now more than ever to defend against an Omicron-level event.
“That’s why it’s so essential that we get these next-generation vaccines, the nasal vaccines, the universal pan-coronavirus vaccines, the monoclonal antibodies that work against all versions of this virus,” Topol said.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment. One official said that efforts to respond to Covid-19 will continue, but in a different form after the public health emergency ends.
“As we emerge from the emergency phase of Covid, the White House is standing up the Office of Pandemic Preparedness Response (OPPR) as required by law,” the official said.
“OPPR will work with HHS and other agencies on ongoing Covid response work, including preparing for future surges, as well as being the lead [Executive Office of the President] Division for Preparedness for Future Pandemics.”
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