ANALYSIS:New variants of SARS-CoV-2 have now evaded New Zealand's border protections twice to spread into the community. While we have seen the virus mutate over the entire course of the pandemic, it was not until mid-December 2020 that variants with measurably different behaviour emerged. We know about these variants thanks to the sequencing efforts from different countries and their open sharing of this knowledge. The most obvious reason why new variants have been emerging recently is that the number of global cases increased massively in the last quarter of 2020. With vaccine protection and natural immunity in a growing number of people, there is greater pressure on virus variants that evade our immune defences.

Source: New Zealand Herald February 16, 2021 05:04 UTC