Health officials around the world are closely monitoring the "Perula covid" variant, scientifically known as BA.2.86, which is spreading rapidly around the world.
What makes BA.2.86 different?
Amesh Adalga, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Mailman School of Public Health, said: “Like other current variants under control, BA.2.86 is a copy of Omicron, but it is 34 mutations away from its counterpart BA.2. Significant, but the number does not always translate into a significant change in behaviour.
According to Eric Topol, a leading researcher in the field of Covid-19, these genetic changes in the virus will obscure the immune system's ability to recognize and attack the variant, even if the person has been vaccinated and even if he was previously infected.
It's difficult for scientists to know exactly how fast BA.2.86 is spreading given the decline in viral testing and surveillance around the world, said Maria van Kerkhove, WHO's COVID technical operations lead.
And she added: If BA.2.86 begins to spread widely, the World Health Organization can classify it as a “type of concern,” meaning that the organization will give it a new name to distinguish it from other Omicron variants.
Is it more dangerous?
In Denmark, where the first cases appeared, the Statens Serum Institute said it was testing the virus to assess whether it posed a threat, but stressed there was currently no evidence that Pyrola causes more serious disease.
Earlier this week, NHS officials stressed that "it will take several weeks for the virus to grow and its biological characteristics to be confirmed... Epidemiological studies cannot be carried out until there are more cases to include."
This variant has not been observed to make people more dangerous than other Omicron variants or to have any enhanced ability to evade immune protection provided by current vaccines or previous infections.
Professor Young also told MailOnline: "Very recent work suggests that this variant is likely to be better able to evade the immune response. However, BA.2.86 appears to be less infectious than previous variants, and that is some good news. We need to Just to be watched closely over the coming weeks as children go back to school and people go back to work after the summer break."
Officials from the Michigan Department of Health, where the first case of the variant was recorded in the United States, said the "older adult" had "mild symptoms" and was not hospitalized.
As for the second American case, which was discovered in Virginia after the patient traveled from Japan, it was asymptomatic, according to descriptive data provided by contractors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, studies have indicated that BA.2 has been associated with reporting more symptoms and greater disruption to daily activity than other Omicron subtype variants, including BA.1.
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