 | Variants of SARS-CoV-2 was a Natural sciences good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||
| ||||||||||
 | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
 | Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about Variants of SARS-CoV-2.
|
 | Text or other creative content from this version of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2#Strains and variants was copied or moved into Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
| Text or other creative content from this version of 501.V2 Variant was copied or moved into Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
| Text or other creative content from this version of Cluster 5 was copied or moved into Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
| Text or other creative content from this version of VOC-202012/01 was copied or moved into Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
 | The content of SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern was merged into Variants of SARS-CoV-2 on 2024-09-29. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
| This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Variants of SARS-CoV-2 article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article. |
Article policies
|
| Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 2 months  |
 | The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article relates to COVID-19. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. |
 | WikiProject COVID-19 consensus WikiProject COVID-19 aims to add to and build consensus for pages relating to COVID-19. They have so far discussed items listed below. Please discuss proposed improvements to them at the project talk page.
To ensure you are viewing the current list, you may wish to . |
Refactoring notes
edit | This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived. |
A rather messy situation, given that these articles are not mainly edited by Wikipedia power-users. I've done a lot of refactoring on these articles, so here are my notes. In short, with the help of {{excerpt}}:
- Where a variant is notable enough to have a substantial Wikipedia article, it will not be transcluded.
- Where a variant is not notable enough to have a Wikipedia article substantially different from the section in Variants of SARS-CoV-2, it will be transcluded.
- Every variant will link to Variants of SARS-CoV-2 via {{main}}.
- No new articles on specific SARS-CoV-2 variants will be made, given the lack of notability, unless someone wants to create SARS-CoV-2 variants by year to condense all the inevitable new variants that will arise, which, as of 10 September 2024[update], is currently in Variants of SARS-CoV-2#Sublineages by year.
This just leaves Omicron, which is rather unusual in that it is still, as of 10 September 2024[update], the current "Variant of Concern". Since most people seem to be focusing on updating Variants of SARS-CoV-2 with new VOIs or VUMs, rather than SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, I've decided to transclude Variants of SARS-CoV-2's content into SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.
Then there's the section on vaccines. Currently, SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has more info on vaccines, so it has been transcluded to Variants of SARS-CoV-2. However, COVID-19 vaccine should be where that info goes. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be well updated, and has had sections transcluded from SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, which appears to be better updated with vaccine info.
So that's the situation right now. I don't know if the casual editors realize how much of this is a mess, but I hope this can serve as a guide as to where you need to edit:
- Probably variants of SARS-CoV-2#Sublineages by year for 2025 and beyond, or COVID-19 vaccine, which needs a lot of work.⸺(Random)staplers 21:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
- @Randomstaplers: The quality of these pages dropped considerably due to COVID-19 dropping out of the media spotlight - which itself is mainly thanks to vaccines - and you seem to have been the first person to make a serious effort in finding a minimally disruptive and reasonable way to relate the pages and sections to one another with minimal redundancy. Just from a very rapid browse, it looks like within this structure, things are at least clear enough to allow updates without redundancy. If someone wants to propose an alternative structure, then let them make that proposal. Boud (talk) 14:41, 30 September 2025 (UTC)
NB.1.8.1
editMy source is this article. I don't know where the information belongs in the article, but this seems significant.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:05, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Vchimpanzee Hi, the recommended source for this is https://www.who.int/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/ and https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/documents/epp/tracking-sars-cov-2/23052025_nb.1.8.1_ire.pdf?sfvrsn=7b14df58_4
- But there are already some of these variants missing from the article. At some point this should be cleaned up, but I don't think it is urgent. Ndevln (talk) 17:33, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
- We already have NB.1.8.1 in both paragraphs for 2025.A properly archived version of https://www.who.int/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variant could be one option if you want to add an update for early 2026; otherwise the information becomes unverifiable against the source. Seems that as of 23 Feb 2026, WHO had a difference with the ECDC's 26 April list, since WHO included KP.3.1.1 as a VUM. Given that ECDC is only for Europe, the difference could either be because of the two months' date difference, or, more likely (my guess), the geographical difference. In any case, we don't need to interpret the difference. That particular WHO home page, even if archived, is rather ambiguous: it doesn't clarify if there are still any VOCs as of 23 Feb 2026; and it doesn't state that the VOI JN.1 (excluding VUM sublineages), i.e. apparently BA.2.86, is still a VOI as of 23 Feb 2026. Seems that an archive of https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/summary would be more useful for the most recent WHO list of variants for early 2026: scroll down to SARS-CoV-2 variant circulation: 22 February to 22 March 2026. Boud (talk) 22:38, 6 May 2026 (UTC)