Should we be worried about Covid again?

 New data from scientists and vaccine manufacturers Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech indicate that the new highly mutated strain of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is not as worrisome as some experts feared when it was first spotted several weeks ago.

The World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are monitoring the new strain that has spread on social media under the name “Birula” and bearing the scientific name BA.2.86, which is a mutant strain of the Omicron strain.

What's new about covid?

Covid infection and hospitalization rates are rising in the United States, Europe and Asia, but are well below previous peaks. The weekly rate of hospital admissions in the United States slowed for three consecutive weeks in August, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the week ending August 26.

As of August 30, the US Centers said that the BA.2.86 strain had been detected in at least four US states, either in infected people or in wastewater. On Tuesday, the state of Delaware announced that it had detected an infection with the strain in a hospital. The World Health Organization also announced that the strain had been monitored in at least six countries.

According to data from the American Centers, the sub-mutated strain EG.5 descended from Omicron and spread on social media under the name “Iris,” and appeared for the first time in November 2021, representing about 20 percent of the current infections with Covid-19 in the United States.

A mutant strain named “Fornax” (scientific name FL.1.5.1) comes in second place, with 14.5 percent of infections in the United States, and represents a growing percentage of Covid-19 infections on the East Coast of the United States. A wide range of other strains represent smaller percentages of the total infections, including the BA.2.86 strain, which currently represents less than one percent.

Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, believes that the FL.1.5.1 strain will become the most widespread in the coming months, but he expects that the wave of infection will not be similar to that resulting from the Omicron strain.