Mike HoneyHere's the latest variant picture with a global scope, to late May.
The NB.1.8.1 "Nimbus" variant has continued to grow, reaching 29%.
Growth of the XFG.* variant accelerated to 19%.
Here are the trends across all the International Traveller samples, with a roughly similar picture, although XFG.* looks a bit higher.
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Two more BA.3.2 samples were reported last week, one from Germany and then one from Western Cape in South Africa.
With this being the 3rd state reporting from South Africa and the low sequencing volumes from that country, my interpretation is that there has been continuous transmission there from at least November through to April, over about 20 weeks. So 20+ generations of infections, mostly undetected.
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Ryan Hisner has been covering the technical details of this BA.3.2 variants since they appeared – here’s his latest thread.
Since then, BA3.2 has been split into 2 child sub-variants. BA.3.2.1 has S:H681R & S:P1162R, while BA.3.2.2 has S:K356T & S:A575S.
https://skyview.social/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbsky.app%2Fprofile%2Fryanhisner.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3lqwycodxlc26&viewtype=tree
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A BlueSky thread by Ryan Hisner on Skyview
Update: pneumonia surveillance in South Africa has delivered another BA.3.2; same branch as the German one—collected Apr 4 (the most recent SA seq). BA.3.2 in South Africa: March—0/9 April—1/2 This is the 1st BA.3.2 from Western Cape. Previous BA.3.2 were from Gauteng & KwaZulu-Natal. 1/6