We use “strain” a lot when I think “variant” might be safer. Virologists often reserve “strain” for a variant that behaves differently (e.g., infecting the cells in a different manner), e.g., Omicron is a different strain but a recombinant is just a new variant unless proven to have different properties. See this explainer.
We should probably make minor rephrasing in the preprint after initial submission. It is unclear to me whether "variant" is better, since we use VoC a lot, implying that a variant can be applied to a larger grouping.
Sally says:
We should probably make minor rephrasing in the preprint after initial submission. It is unclear to me whether "variant" is better, since we use VoC a lot, implying that a variant can be applied to a larger grouping.