A new early warning system can predict the highest-risk coronavirus variants simply from their genetic code, alerting health authorities and vaccine developers to the potential risks months before they spread, according to a study.
The artificial intelligence-based program, developed by BioNTech, the German biotech group behind the leading Covid-19 vaccine, and north African AI start-up InstaDeep, identified more than 90 per cent of variants of concern, including the highly transmissible Omicron strain, on average two months before their designation by the World Health Organization.
The results from the study show that the program can evaluate the risks of new variants from their spike proteins within minutes, and monitor them as they evolve “nearly in real time”, according to the two companies. Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, said the tool would be made freely available.