THE ESSENTIAL
- Covid is on the rise in some European countries with several variants responsible for this eighth wave.
- People over the age of 60 as well as adults under 60 at risk of severe disease and caregivers are eligible for a booster dose of the new vaccine effective once morest Omicron since Monday October 3.
Covid-19 has not finished mutating and making more or less dangerous babies… While scientists are monitoring more than 300 Omicron sub-lines, officials from theWorld Health Organizationthe XXB variant might become the next dominant strain.
Omicron sublines: XXB is highly contagious
Coming from a combination of two sub-lineages of Omicron, it first appeared in Singapore before infecting people in the United States, Europe and Australia where it knows “a very rapid and very recent growth”, said Professor Antoine Flahaultepidemiologist and director of the Institute for Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva.
In addition, XXB has five characteristic mutations that allow it to circumvent the immunity acquired through the other variants. This means that it can spread among people with different layers of protection, whether it is vaccination or infections from previous Omicron lines… It might thus lead to a further increase in the number of cases.
Vaccination always protects once morest serious forms, even in the event of infection with XXB
The concern of the scientific community is also due to the fact that certain monoclonal antibody treatments have already been rendered useless and had to be abandoned due to the evolution of the virus. Indeed, these treatments cannot resist certain variants (like XXB), which might make people at high risk of Covid even more vulnerable, explains Dr Tom Peacock, virologist at Imperial College London in an interview for Stat News.
XXB doesn’t seem so much “reset“completely the pandemic:”The immunity people have gained through vaccinations and infections will likely continue to provide strong protection once morest serious consequences for most of them, especially if they have kept up to date with their boosters.”, confirms the virologist.
Sars-CoV-2: a new major variant might appear
A future without Covid still does not seem to be on the cards. The virus might indeed have a surprise in store for us in a few weeks, according to experts: “If it is possible that future strains of SARS-2 that we will be dealing with will continue to descend from Omicron, another Omicron-like event might occur. In other words, a variant from a distant part of the SARS-2 family tree might suddenly appear and supplant everything else in the landscape, as the original Omicron did last year around Thanksgiving”, notes Tom Peacok.
