BQ omicron variant: Will cases spike in the US like they did in Europe?

Why the Europe-to-U.S. trend persists is complex, say experts I spoke with, and they emphasized that there’s no definitive answer. “There are a lot of hypotheses out there that could explain it,” says Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas in Austin. One major factor is global travel patterns. Europe is a linchpin of global travel, meaning waves that begin elsewhere in the world may tend to be channeled through Europe before reaching the United States. Based on common airline routes, it makes sense that COVID would have initially spread from Asia to Europe first. It also makes sense that delta, which originated in India, would have spread to the UK before reaching the United States, as India and the UK have closer travel ties.