US CDC tracks new lineage of virus that causes COVID

Aug 17 (Reuters) – U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention mentioned on Thursday that it was monitoring a brand new, extremely mutated lineage of the virus that causes COVID-19.

The lineage is known as BA.2.86, and has been detected in the US, Denmark and Israel, the CDC mentioned in a put up on messaging platform X.

“As we study extra about BA.2.86, CDC’s recommendation on defending your self from COVID-19 stays the identical,” the company mentioned.

The World Well being Group (WHO) earlier on Thursday mentioned in a put up on X that it had categorized BA.2.86 as a “variant beneath monitoring” because of the giant variety of mutations it carries.

The WHO mentioned that, to date, just a few sequences of the variant have been reported from a handful of nations.

The brand new lineage, which has 36 mutations from the currently-dominant XBB.1.5 COVID variant “harkens again to an earlier department” of the virus, defined Dr. S. Wesley Lengthy, medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist.

He mentioned it stays to be seen whether or not BA.2.86 will have the ability to out-compete different strains of the virus or have any benefit in escaping immune responses from prior an infection or vaccination.

Early evaluation signifies that the brand new variant “could have equal or better escape than XBB.1.5 from antibodies elicited by pre-Omicron and first-generation Omicron variants,” Jesse Bloom, a virologist on the Fred Hutchinson Most cancers Middle mentioned in a slide deck revealed on Thursday. https://slides.com/jbloom/new_2nd_gen_ba2_variant?ftag=YHF4eb9d17#/12

The Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is the pressure focused by vaccines in upcoming COVID booster photographs. learn extra learn extra

Bloom’s slides be aware that the most definitely state of affairs is that BA.2.86 is much less transmissible than present dominant variants, so by no means spreads broadly, however extra sequencing knowledge is required.

“My largest concern can be that it may trigger an even bigger spike in instances than what we have now seen in current waves,” Dr. Lengthy mentioned. “The boosters will nonetheless assist you combat off COVID on the whole.”

(This story has been corrected to repair the identify of the COVID variant to XBB.1.5 in paragraphs 6 and eight, the identify of Fred Hutchinson Most cancers Middle in paragraph 8, and typos for BA.2.86 in paragraph 7)

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