A new Covid-19 variant has been identified by the WHO and US health authorities. This strain is highly noticeable among SARS-CoV-2 variants, but forecasts indicate lower rates of severe illness and mortality compared to earlier phases of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization and US health authorities said Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of Covid-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance “due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries,” it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States.
“BA.2.86 is the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron,” Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology at University College London, said in a comment published Friday, referring to the variant that exploded onto the global stage in the winter of 2022, causing a surge in Covid cases.
He stressed though that even if BA.2.86 caused a major spike in infections, “we are not expecting to witness comparable levels of severe disease and death than we did earlier in the pandemic when the Alpha, Delta or Omicron variants spread.”
“Most people on earth have now been vaccinated and/or infected by the virus,” he said, pointing out that even if people were reinfected with the new variant, “immune memory will still allow their immune system to kick in and control the infection far more effectively.”
As of August 13, there were more than 769 million cases of Covid-19 confirmed and more than 6.9 million deaths worldwide, although the real toll is expected to be much higher because many cases went undetected.
Katrine Houmøller, with AFP
