September 19, 2023 – The highly mutated version of the COVID-19 virus called BA.2.86 has already infected people in 10 U.S. states, in accordance with a worldwide COVID tracking database.
BA.2.86 has greater than 30 mutations within the a part of the virus liable for entering healthy cells and causing infection. The sheer variety of mutations has caught the eye of scientists and public health officials, who fear the structure might be a recipe for the subsequent COVID wave as winter approaches.
The data, published on GISAIDSshowed that BA.2.86 infections occurred in Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington State.
BA.2.86 has also been detected in wastewater within the United States, in accordance with the CDC Wastewater tracking report. However, cases within the US are still so rare that BA.2.86 will not be reported within the federal agency's regular variant tracker.
CDC officials concluded that BA.2.86 is spreading inside communities, in accordance with a Friday To updatebut will not be increasing rapidly and will not be the rationale for the present increase in infections or hospital admissions.
In a study widely reported earlier this month and published on Monday, The LancetJapanese researchers expressed concern that BA.2.86 was “spreading unnoticed around the world.”
Led by a team on the University of Tokyo, scientists conducted laboratory tests that showed that protection from vaccines or previous infection against BA.2.86 might not be as effective in comparison with other widespread strains of the virus.
“Overall, these results suggest that BA.2.86 is one of the most immune-evasive variants identified to date,” the authors wrote.
Other early laboratory experiments have shown that antibodies produced by vaccines and former infections trigger an antibody response against BA.2.86, the CDC said. reported on September 8At the time, the Agency noted that real-world data can be the very best strategy to assess how well immunity from vaccination or previous infection protects against severe disease brought on by infection with BA.2.86.