2023-08-19 08:24:36
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — A new variant of the highly variable “Covid-19” virus is spreading in countries that have declared a state of alert, in parallel with scientists scrambling to understand its spread and the extent of our immunity’s ability to confront it.
The new mutant has been dubbed BA.2.86 and has been dubbed “Pirola” by mutant hunters on social media. According to Dr. Jesse Blum, who studies viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, the new variant had more than 30 mutations in the amino acid of its spike protein compared to its closest predecessor: the BA.2 subtype of Omicron.
“This represents an evolutionary leap similar in size to the one that originally gave rise to the omicron,” Bloom posted on his lab’s website.
The WHO designated BA.2.86 as a “monitored mutant” Thursday, a designation that encourages countries to track and report sequences they find.
Any variant that is under surveillance, causes more severe disease, or evades existing vaccines or treatments is on the WHO’s list of mutations of interest or concern. To date, XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16 and EG.5 have been listed as variants of interest. The World Health Organization has not identified any variants of concern.
Only six sequences of BA.2.86 have been reported in four countries, but epidemiologists worry it may represent more because global surveillance of the variant has declined.
The mutant was spotted by scientists in Israel on Sunday. Since then, Denmark has reported three sequences, and two more sequences in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively.
“It is very unusual for the coronal corona to change so dramatically and develop 30 new mutations. The last time we saw such a big change was when Omicron appeared,” Morten Rasmussen, senior researcher at the Statens Serum Institut, said in a statement.
According to the institute, the three cases in Denmark belong to people located in different parts of the country, and there does not seem to be any contact between them.
SSI scientists stressed that it is still too early to say anything about the severity or extent of the new variant. They are in the process of developing a variant of the virus to test it against human antibodies.
And Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Control, said Friday that the new variant should not be a cause for concern.
And she continued in her interview with CNN: “I think what we are seeing is that the detection mechanisms that we have in place are working, right?”, adding that they are “more prepared than ever to detect changes in the “Covid-19” virus and respond to them.
Cohen pointed out, “We are tracking this new sequence. It has mutations that make it different from other circulating sequences. Then the question becomes, what does that mean?” “Will it increase? Will we see more cases? Or will it fade away and not be a concern?”
In a new threat assessment of the variant on Friday, Britain’s Health Security Agency said the fact that these sequences were found in four different countries in people with no recent travel history “suggests well-established international transmission”.
The report stated that the sequences found were very similar, which may indicate that they appeared recently and are spreading rapidly, although the agency noted that this assessment does not have high confidence until more sequences are available.
On the other hand, researchers at the University of Michigan, the laboratory that discovered the sequence in the United States, did not provide any information about the affected patient, saying only that the state’s health department is conducting investigations into the case.
EG.5, a descendant of XBB, is currently the dominant variant in the United States, causing about 20% of all newly registered COVID-19 cases in the country. The next most common variant, FL.1.5.1, has grown rapidly and now causes about 13% of all new cases, according to the CDC’s mutation tracker.
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