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New evolution of the coronavirus’s omicron variant could mean the virus is becoming more “steady” and “flu-like,” said Trevor Bedford, a leading infectious disease scientist in Seattle who has tracked the virus’s genome since the pandemic began.

Local and global researchers are attempting to predict how the virus might evolve over the next year as new COVID-19 resources roll out, including the federal government’s  launched on Tuesday.

One theory comes from a team led by Bedford, who studies the coronavirus and its evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The idea that the coronavirus will one day look similar to seasonal influenza has been widely discussed over the past year, though last winter’s emergence of omicron and its unusually rapid spread . Now, more research about how omicron’s subvariants have evolved has shed new light on the topic, Bedford said during a Tuesday webinar hosted by UW Medicine and Fred Hutch.

According to Bedford, the “one to watch,” based on the number of mutations, is a sublineage spreading in New York and Massachusetts called . One noticeable mutation that appears in BA.2.12.2, Bedford said, is a mutation on the same spike that “appeared to have an important role in promoting the spread of (the delta variant).”

Lineages BA.4 and BA.5 have also been spreading in South Africa, and share a spike mutation with BA.1 and BA.2.

“All three of these then have about the same apparent advantage as BA.2 did over BA.1, so we’d expect a growth over the coming months, rather than these immediate, large epidemics,” Bedford said Tuesday.