New Delhi, July 11 (BUS): The rapidly changing coronavirus has given rise to a highly contagious omicron mutation that worries scientists as it advances in India and reappears in many other countries, including the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reports. .
Scientists say the variant – called BA.2.75 – may be able to spread quickly and overcome immunity from previous vaccines and infections. It is unclear whether it can cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5.
“It’s still really early days to draw a lot of conclusions,” said Matthew Pinker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “But it seems that, particularly in India, transmission rates are showing some kind of dramatic increase.” He said whether it will outperform BA.5 has yet to be determined.
Shishi Lu, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases, said IUDa company that provides viral sequence information to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latest mutations have been detected in several remote states in India, and it appears to be spreading faster than other variants there, said Libby Thukral, a scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi. It has also been discovered in about 10 other countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Two cases were recently identified on the West Coast of the United States, and Helix identified a third US case last week.
What worries experts is the large number of mutations that separate this new variant from its omicron ancestors. Some of these mutations are located in regions attached to the spike protein, Benecker said, and could allow the virus to bind to cells more efficiently.
Another concern is that the genetic modifications may make it easier for the virus to circumvent previous antibodies — protective proteins the body makes in response to a vaccine or infection from a previous variant.
But experts say vaccines and boosters are still the best defense against severe COVID-19. You will probably see the United States in the fall Updated combinations of the vaccine in development that targets the newer Omicron strains.
“Some might say, ‘Well, vaccination and booster didn’t stop people from getting infected.’ And yes, that’s true,” he said. But what we’ve seen is that the rates of people who end up in the hospital and die have dropped dramatically. As more people are naturally vaccinated, boosted or infected, we’re starting to see baseline levels of immunity around the world increase.”
It may take several weeks to learn whether the latest omicron mutations may affect the course of the epidemic. Meanwhile, Dr. Jagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at the Indian Christian Medical College in Vellore, said the growing concern about the variant underscores the need for more sustainable efforts to track and trace viruses that combine genetic efforts with real-world information about who gets sick. How bad. “It is important that monitoring is not a start-stop strategy,” she said.
BA.2.75 is another reminder that the coronavirus is constantly evolving and spreading, Luo said.
“We’d like to go back to pre-pandemic life, but we still need to be careful,” she said. “We need to accept that we are now living with a higher level of risk than we used to.”
AOQ