Thread by @Mike_Honey_

New variant MV.1 is spreading quite rapidly, and looks a potential next challenger against the now-dominant DeFLuQE variants (KP.3.1.1 and descendants), perhaps rivalling XEC.

MV.1 first appeared in Maharashtra, India in late June.
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The story might've ended there, but after almost a month the next sample was recorded. It has since spread quite rapidly to 9 countries on 4 continents. Around 40 samples have now been reported.
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In North America, MV.1 has mostly been reported in the north-east US. In Canada; Ontario and BC have reported the first samples.
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In Europe, MV.1 was first reported in Portugal, then Scotland, then Ireland and the Netherlands.
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MV.1 is descended from JN.1.49 by way of MB.1.1.1. That long evolutionary path has been most successful in samples from India, without any notable success elsewhere.

MV.1 reverts the Spike K478T mutation to the ancestral (Wuhan) type.
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Globally, MV.1 is showing a competitive growth advantage of 4.4% per day (31% per week) over JN.1.* + DeFLuQE variants. This is just a shade slower than XEC's current global pace.
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Here's a table of weekly frequencies for MV.1 by geography (continents and/or countries).  Note the recent data from India is very thin and lags by many weeks.
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There is apparently very strong growth reported for the US, but the data from the US is often heavily skewed by pooled samples and samples from travellers in the early spread phase of recent variants.
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In this detailed comment, Ryan Hisner highlighted the super-rare nucleotide mutation T29637A, featured in MV.1 ancestor MB.1:

🧵github.com/sars-cov-2-var…

h/t to Variant Hunters and for the tricky GISAID search for MV.1:
C936T,-22995A,T3565C,G7393T
Or
MB.1.1 with -22995A and ORF1a:T224I
🧵x.com/xz_keg
x.com/siamosolocani

-22995A means that mutation was reverted back to the ancestral type.  In my dataviz, fueled by Nextclade output, -22995A is represented as A22995C.
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As the MV.1 designation has not flowed through into Nextclade, I am approximating it above by searching for it's characteristic mutations.

Interactive mutation matching dataviz, code, acknowledgements and more info here:

🧵endsgithub.com/Mike-Honey/sar…

PS: wrt to the maps:

Locations are approximate - typically country and state/province.