Lockdowns in Shangai and other Chinese cities are weighing on China’s economy Will boosters be effective? “So I think that’s what tempers my concern about this variant, at this point in time,” he added. “It’s a concern that it’s increasing, but it doesn’t look like something that’s vastly different from what’s already been circulating in the US for the past three to four months,” Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University, was quoted in The New York Times as saying. ![]() Yet, there is little evidence the strain is causing more severe illness. However, this variant may be more capable of causing infection in people who have had COVID-19 before. Tests for detection and medication to treat COVID-19 appear to be effective with BA.2.86, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ![]() Scientists have said BA.2.86 is unlikely to cause a devastating wave of severe disease and death, given immune defences built up worldwide from vaccination and prior infection. It has since been detected in other symptomatic patients in routine airport screening, and in wastewater samples in a handful of countries. BA.2.86 then appeared in the US and Canada in August. It was first spotted in Denmark on July 24 after the virus infecting a patient at risk of becoming severely ill was sequenced. A woman takes a coronavirus test in Manhattan, New York, in 2021 What do we know about the BA.2.86 variant?īA.2.86 is a newly designated variant of Omicron, which is a variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, but has additional mutations compared with previously detected Omicron subvariants, according to the Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialists. The variant was identified in China in February 2023 and then first detected in the US in April. While the World Health Organization has confirmed that “the public health risk posed by EG.5 is evaluated as low at the global level,” it also classified it as a “variant of interest”, meaning it has genetic changes that give it an advantage and its prevalence is growing. “But these massive shifts, which we also saw from Delta to Omicron, are worrisome.” What do we know about EG.5?ĮG.5 is a descendant of the Omicron variant and has one notable mutation that helps it to evade antibodies developed by the immune system in response to earlier variants and vaccines. ![]() “When we went from XBB.1.5 to EG.5, that was maybe one or two mutations,” he was quoted in the Yale Medicine bulletin as saying. Pirola has more than 30 mutations, which according to Scott Roberts, Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist, is “notable”. The BA.2.86 variant, nicknamed “Pirola”, is a newly designated, highly mutating variant of Omicron which triggered the surge in cases.Ī smaller wave of COVID-19 cases has meanwhile been fuelled by the newest dominant variant EG.5, or “Eris”. New coronavirus variants have raised concern across the world amid a rise in cases in the United States and parts of Europe.
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