The risk of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant emergence in low and middle-income countries (LMICs)
Kaiming Bi,
Jose Luis Herrera-Diestra,
Yuan Bai,
Zhanwei Du,
Lin Wang,
Graham Gibson,
Maureen Johnson-Leon,
Spencer J. Fox,
Lauren Ancel Meyers
Affiliations
Kaiming Bi
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA; Corresponding author.
Jose Luis Herrera-Diestra
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Yuan Bai
WHO Collaborating Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China; Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China
Zhanwei Du
WHO Collaborating Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China; Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China
Lin Wang
University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EH, UK
Graham Gibson
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Maureen Johnson-Leon
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Spencer J. Fox
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Lauren Ancel Meyers
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA; Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA; Corresponding author at: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
We estimated the probability of undetected emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in 25 low and middle-income countries (LMICs) prior to December 5, 2021. In nine countries, the risk exceeds 50 %; in Turkey, Pakistan and the Philippines, it exceeds 99 %. Risks are generally lower in the Americas than Europe or Asia.
