On Thursday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that they were monitoring a newly discovered, severely mutated lineage of the virus that causes Covid-19.
According to a post on messaging platform X by the CDC, the lineage goes by the moniker BA.2.86 and has been found in Israel, the United States, and Denmark.
“As we learn more about BA.2.86, CDC’s advice on protecting yourself from Covid-19 remains the same,” the agency said.
Due to the significant number of mutations BA.2.86 possesses, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated it as a “variant under monitoring” earlier on Thursday in a post on X.
According to the WHO, only a small number of sequences of the variation have been reported thus far from a small number of nations.
Wesley Long, medical head of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist, said that the new lineage, which differs by 36 mutations from the dominant XBB.1.5 Covid variation, “harkens back to an earlier branch” of the virus.
Whether BA.2.86 will be able to outcompete other virus strains or have any benefit in evading immune reactions from earlier infections or vaccinations, he claimed, is still up in the air.
According to preliminary research, the new version “will have equal or greater escape than XBB.1.5 from antibodies elicited by pre-Omicron and first-generation Omicron variants,” according to a slide presentation presented on Thursday by Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
The strain that will be protected against in subsequent Covid booster doses is the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.
The most plausible scenario, according to Bloom’s slides, is that BA.2.86 never spreads widely because it is less contagious than the current dominant variations. However, more sequencing data are required to confirm this.
“My biggest concern would be that it could cause a bigger spike in cases than what we have seen in recent waves,” Long said. “The boosters will still help you fight off Covid in general.”
