Additional strains of COVID-19 continue popping up on a regular basis. A new variant, BA.2.86, is now being carefully monitored by public health officials due to the large number of mutations it carries.
At least seven cases of BA.2.86 have been reported, with infections being recorded in Israel, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and one infection in the United States, in Michigan, according to the global virus tracker GISAID.
Although the spread is very small at the moment, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are keeping close tabs on the new strain.
What Is Different About the ‘Pirola’ BA.2.86 COVID-19 Variant?
BA.2.86 (nicknamed Pirola on social media) has 36 spike amino acid mutations relative to variant XBB.1.5 (the dominant strain earlier this year) and 38 such changes compared with variant EG.5 (the current most prevalent strain), according to Jesse Bloom, PhD, a professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, who studies virus evolution. These spike proteins attach to human cells during infection, says the CDC.
“Because of the large number of spike mutations in this new variant, it is important for scientists to monitor to see if it spreads more,” says Dr. Bloom “Because these sequences [of BA.2.86] are from four countries, it indicates there has been at least some transmission of the variant. But at this point the new variant is still rare, and so it is too soon to know if it will just fizzle out or spread widely.”
Increasing Vigilance as COVID-19 Markers Rise
Public health officials may be extra watchful right now as the main COVID-19 indicators have been trending upward. Latest CDC data show that COVID-related hospitalizations have climbed 14.3 percent over the week before and deaths have increased by 8.3 percent.
Last week, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control warned that transmission has started to increase in some European countries after several months of low infection rates. The organization also highlighted a rise in virus mutations.
The WHO has indicated that variants may be circulating more widely than reported as global tracking has declined since the start of the pandemic.
“Surveillance, sequencing, and COVID-19 reporting are critical to track known and detect new variants,” wrote Maria Van Kerkhove, MD, the COVID-19 technical lead for the WHO, on X (formerly Twitter) last week.
Risks of ‘Pirola’ Still Unknown, but Vaccination Should Offer Protection
Although BA.2.86 is a descendant of omicron, Bloom calls the new variant “a big evolutionary jump.” Still, he expects that vaccination, prior infections, or both, will provide protection against severe disease even for such a heavily mutated variant.
“Even if a highly mutated new variant like BA.2.86 starts to spread, we will be in a far better place than we were in 2020 and 2021, since most people have some immunity to SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID-19] now,” says Bloom.
In a statement about its single case of the variant, the Michigan Health Department said that the infected patient is an older adult with mild symptoms and the individual has not been hospitalized.
Because BA.2.86 is so highly mutated, however, Bloom notes that, if this variant spreads widely, the current vaccine and the one that’s going to be rolled out this fall “would not be that great of a match to it.”
Based on available evidence so far, the threat of BA.2.86 is still not clear. Belsie Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the CDC, says, “We do not yet know what risks, if any, this may pose to the public’s health beyond what has been seen with other currently circulating lineages.”
The federal health agency is collaborating with U.S. and international partners to gather more information.
Advice on how to protect yourself, your household, and community remains the same. The CDC urges those who have COVID-19 symptoms to get tested. Individuals who have suspected or confirmed infection should stay at home and avoid contact with others. The CDC also encourages the public to stay up to date with vaccinations, as “vaccines significantly lower the risk of getting very sick, being hospitalized, or dying from COVID-19,” according to the agency.
This content was originally published here.
