Fig. 1

Global circumstances regarding COVID-19. A Resurgence of new cases is associated with increased mortality. Data were collected from the WHO COVID-19 Dashboard. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2020; available online: https://covid19.who.int/. B Epidemic dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 dominant variants. The data for frequency of infection by each variant were collected from GISAID [251]. The death rate was calculated as weekly deaths/weekly cases from (A). C Genomic variations in spike protein of major and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. D Epidemic dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants on five continents and South Africa; represented as daily frequency of each detected sequence. Due to a lack of sufficient data from South Africa in June July 2022 (daily sequencing cases < 15), the Omicron frequency analysis for South Africa was only performed up to July 11, 2022. All data were retrieved from GISAID