Worrying new variant.9 Mar 2022 21:51
Don’t stop the testing .
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/08/omic-m08.html
The most alarming report has come in a study at the University of Tokyo, which compared Omicron BA.1 and BA.2, and concluded that BA.2 is so different that it should be classified as a full-fledged new variant, the most dangerous yet to emerge in the COVID-19 pandemic, now in its third year.
“Based on our findings, we propose that BA.2 should be recognized as a unique variant of concern, and this SARS-CoV-2 variant should be monitored in depth,” said lead scientist Kei Sato.
In an interview conducted after the Tokyo study was made public, and published today on the WSWS, scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam, co-founder of the World Health Network, which advocates a policy of eliminating COVID rather than “living with the virus,” explained the significance of the findings.
The study found that BA.2 is not only more transmissible than BA.1, it is more vaccine evading and more resistant to previous infection by BA.1. “If you were previously infected by BA.1, the level of protection to BA.2 is not the same as BA.1. BA.2 will bypass immunity after infection by BA.1 and lead to [higher risk] of another infection,” he told us.
The Tokyo study also found that, in animals, BA.2 caused substantially more damage than BA.1, because it drove the infection deeper into the lungs than the original Omicron sub-variant. Bar-Yam told the WSWS: “Now, obviously this is something that we still need to see in people, but if you realize that this is what’s happening in hamsters, you should stop assuming that it’s okay and you should go back and look at what’s going on now.”
Bar-Yam said the description of BA.2 as a sub-variant of Omicron was likely incorrect. “BA.2 is different enough from BA.1 that it should be given its own designation—its own Greek letter—according to the current numbering scheme. But that’s politically not very comfortable because people are declaring this to be over and having a new Greek letter would raise questions that require us to reevaluate what’s going on.”
Other studies have confirmed that BA.2 is displacing BA.1. The new strain of COVID is now found in 8-10 percent of genetic samples in the United States, about where the first Omicron variant was in early December.
Other recent studies confirm that BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1 by a factor of 50 percent (in Denmark, where BA.2 is now dominant), and in the Tokyo study, which found a 40 percent increase in infectivity.
Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on COVID-19 for the World Health Organization, said, “BA.2 has a growth advantage even over BA.1,” and that accordingly, “We need to drive transmission down. Because if we don’t, we will not only see more cases, more hospitalizations, more deaths, but we will see more people suffering from Long Covid .
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