We're stuck with COVID-19 and the virus that causes it, experts say. And while we have a better understanding of both than we did three years ago, there is still much we don't know.
Some quarters of the scientific community have a view mutations will become milder over time, Griffin said, although he believes this is far from certain.
When it comes to viral evolution, there's a general trend whereby a virus, when spreading in populations with strong immunity, will become better at evading the immune system at the expense of its transmissibility, said Professor Andrew Lloyd, an infectious diseases physician at the University of NSW's Kirby Institute.
"Protection is certainly impacted by waning over time, and also by the immune evasion in new subvariants," Griffin said. "In terms of how long each vaccine will last, who gets what level of protection, how we assess who's protected and who's not, what the ideal interval for repeat vaccines is ... we still don't really know."Researchers are also still learning about how the immune system protects us against the effects of COVID-19.
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