I haven’t talked about it recently, I did discuss it with regard to Delta, whose interval was shorter than the original strain. It would be surprising for Omicron, which didn’t come from Delta, to be faster even than Delta, but perhaps it is possible. It would take a lot of this to be enough, but it would certainly help.
Given that serial interval is a very effective way to amplify an already-high R0 to great evolutionary advantage, and common colds/flu etc all have developed serial interval of more like 1-2 days showing there’s plenty of room for COVID to climb in this regard, I would expect lots of new dominant strains to show shortened serial interval regardless of heritage.
Not sure if there’s publication bias or measurement bias here but the first link on google shows a study estimating Omicron serial interval at 2.2 days in South Korea.
I haven’t talked about it recently, I did discuss it with regard to Delta, whose interval was shorter than the original strain. It would be surprising for Omicron, which didn’t come from Delta, to be faster even than Delta, but perhaps it is possible. It would take a lot of this to be enough, but it would certainly help.
Given that serial interval is a very effective way to amplify an already-high R0 to great evolutionary advantage, and common colds/flu etc all have developed serial interval of more like 1-2 days showing there’s plenty of room for COVID to climb in this regard, I would expect lots of new dominant strains to show shortened serial interval regardless of heritage.
Not sure if there’s publication bias or measurement bias here but the first link on google shows a study estimating Omicron serial interval at 2.2 days in South Korea.