Post-pandemic amnesia is a natural reaction, and it’s common for misremembering to occur after a pandemic or collective traumatic event occurs. Yet the reality is that SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, is still finding ways to infect people by evolving new mutations, and a new variant has raised concern among virologists that continue to track the virus.
Last month, the World Health Organization labeled the COVID variant NB.1.8.1 a “variant under monitoring” because it has been surging across Asia and made up 10.7% of global sequences reported as of mid-May. Now, the variant has been detected in the United States, Europe and Canada as well, concerning virus trackers who — for the first time since the Pirola variant began circulating in August 2023 — bestowed upon it a nickname: Nimbus.
