US disease control agency CDC tracks new virus lineage that causes Covid
CDC Tracks: The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that they have tracked a new family of virus that causes Covid-19.
New Lineage of Virus
The new lineage is named as BA 2.86 and has been detected in the United States, Denmark and Israel.
Further, the agency said in a blog post, “as we learn more about BA.2.86, CDC’s advice on protecting yourself from Covid-19 remains the same.”
The World Health Organisation earlier said in a post that it had classified BA.2.86 as a “variant under monitoring” due to the large number of mutations it carries.
Furthermore, the WHO said that, so far, only a few sequences of the variant have been reported from a handful of countries.
The new lineage, which has 36 mutations from the currently-dominant XBB.1.5 Covid variant “harkens back to an earlier branch” of the virus, explained Dr. S. Wesley Long, medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist.
He said it remains to be seen whether BA.2.86 will be able to out-compete other strains of the virus or have any advantage in escaping immune responses from prior infection or vaccination.
Analysis
Jesse Bloom is a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre. According to his analysis, the new variant will have equal or greater escape than XBB.1.5 from antibodies elicited by pre-Omicron and first-generation Omicron variants.
Further, the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is the strain targeted by vaccines in upcoming Covid booster shots.
Furthermore, bloom’s analysis indicate that BA.2.86 is less transmissible than current dominant variants. Henceforth, it never spreads widely, but more sequencing data is needed.
“My biggest concern would be that it could cause a bigger spike in cases than what we have seen in recent waves,” Dr. Long said. “The boosters will still help you fight off Covid in general.”
