The Latest in Critical Care, 8/28/23 (Issue #12)
New Covid variant BA.2.86 turns epidemiologists’ heads.
It’s highly mutated (35 mutations on the spike protein; as big a change as Omicron relative to the Wuhan strain), suggesting vaccines and neutralizing antibodies will be less effective against it. It’s presumed to be highly transmissible, although Omicron is already hyper-transmissible. And it’s probably spreading virtually everywhere (10 cases in four countries, including two in the U.S. in Michigan and Virginia; also in wastewater in Ohio, Switzerland and Thailand; most of the cases have no travel history). The coming booster will not be well targeted to it, due to the mismatch in spike proteins the shots are based on.
But how virulent is it, and how well will our immune systems and established vaccines and treatments work against it? Only time will tell, but so far there is zero proof BA.2.86 is any more virulent than Omicron.
Michigan's health department described its case as "an older adult with mild symptoms [who] has not bee…
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