What can the Covid-19 Zoe app tell us about future variants?

This interview with Professor Ana Valdes was done in February but we're only posting it now (in April) because it relates to a paper she co-authored which has only just been published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases. It's about covid and the Zoe app, and focuses on the omicron variant. Now government funding for the Zoe app's been stopped (though the app itself is still going strong) and omicron has been superceded by BA2, and in part thanks to this study, the official UK symptom list for covid has been updated. So as well as talking about the Lancet paper, I asked Professor Valdes about how viruses evolve over time and whether the laws of natural selection would tend to push them towards having less severe effects. But we started off with what made this study different to its predecessors.  Links Zoe App Lancet article Prof Ana Valdes This Podcast is brought to you by the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre. Follow us on @NottmBRC, or email Nottingham research. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast where-ever you get your podcasts, and like/review us on Apple Podcasts especially. It's For Science.