Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – New research has revealed that the Omicron sub-mutant, BA.2, not only spreads faster, but may cause more severe disease, and appears to be able to invalidate some of the main tools used to combat “Covid-19.” “.
New laboratory experiments conducted in Japan showed that BA.2 may have properties that make it capable of causing severe disease, similar to the previous COVID-19 mutant, and implicitly the ‘delta’ mutant.
Like Omicron, BA.2 appears to largely elude the immunity conferred by vaccines.
A booster dose restores protection, reducing the risk of disease following infection by 74%.
BA.2 is also resistant to some treatments, such as sutrofimab, the currently used monoclonal antibody once morest Omicron.
The findings were published online Wednesday, as a preliminary study ahead of print and peer review.
The study is usually reviewed by independent experts before being published in medical journals. Preprints allow research to be shared more quickly.
“It may be a virus that’s worse than BA.1, has the ability to transmit better, and cause worse disease,” said Dr. Daniel Rhodes, chair of the department of microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who reviewed the study and was not involved in the research.
The BA.2 mutant has undergone significant changes compared to the original virus that causes “Covid-19” disease, which first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and is also characterized by dozens of genetic changes that differ from the original Omicron strain, which makes it different from the latest epidemic virus, similar to The alpha, beta, gamma, and delta mutants that were different from each other.
The study’s author, Kei Sato, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, explained that these results prove that BA.2 is not supposed to be considered a sub-Omicron, and that it needs to be closely monitored.
“BA.2 is called a ghost omicron because it doesn’t show up in PCR tests as a failed targeting of the S gene,” Sato told CNN. “So labs have to take an extra step and sequence the virus to find this mutant.”
He emphasized that “a method for specifically detecting BA.2 has to be identified, which is the first thing that many countries have to do.”
This opinion was supported by Deborah Fuller, a virologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who is not participating in the study, and following reviewing it, said: “It seems that we may be looking at a new Greek letter here,” referring to the names of the previous mutant that were chosen according to the alphabetical sequence of Greek letters.
Varying real-world data on sub-mutant severity
The phantom BA.2 mutant spreads 30-50% faster than an omicron and has so far been detected in 74 countries and 47 US states.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Control estimates that 4% of Americans with COVID-19 are BA.2, but many other regions of the world have more experience with this variant.
It has become dominant in regarding 10 other countries: Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Denmark, Guam, India, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines, according to the WHO’s weekly epidemiological report.
However, there is mixed evidence regarding the dangers of BA.2 in the real world.
Hospitalizations continue to decline in countries where BA.2 has had a foothold, such as South Africa and the United Kingdom. But in Denmark, where BA.2 has become the main cause of infection, hospitalizations and deaths have risen, according to the World Health Organization.
Resistant to monoclonal antibody treatments
The new study found that BA.2 can replicate in cells more quickly than BA.1, the original version of the omicron mutant. It is also more adept at making cells stick together. This allows the virus to form clumps larger than cells, known as cellular conjunctivas, compared to the BA.1 version.
This is worrying because these blocks then become factories to produce more copies of the virus. The delta mutant was able to form cellular conjunctiva, which is thought to be one of the reasons it is destructive to the lungs.
When the researchers conducted experiments on hamsters when infected with BA.2 and BA.1, the lung function of animals infected with BA.2 was worse. In tissue samples, lungs of hamsters infected with BA.2 were more damaged than those infected with BA.1.
Similar to the original omicron mutant, BA.2 was able to penetrate the antibodies into the blood of people who had received the COVID-19 vaccination, and it was also resistant to antibodies in people who contracted COVID-19 early in the pandemic. BA.2 was resistant to some monoclonal antibody treatments.
However, antibodies in the blood of people who have recently recovered from omicron infection appear to have some protection once morest BA.2, especially if they also received the vaccine.
This raises an important point, according to Fuller. Although BA.2 spreads rapidly and causes more disease than omicron, it may not cause a more devastating wave of COVID-19 infection.
Fuller stressed that one caveat that we have to think regarding when new mutations appear that may seem more dangerous, is that there are two sides to the story.
“Our immune system is also evolving,” Fuller noted, adding that we are in a race with the virus, and the main question is, who is in the lead?
“What we ultimately want is for the host to be ahead of the virus,” she said. “In other words, our immunity, it has to be one step ahead of the next mutant that emerges.”
For this reason, Fuller feels it is not yet time for communities to raise mask-wearing mandates.
“Removing the masks now is not a good idea, as it will serve the spread of the sub-mutant,” Fuller said, adding, “Let’s reach the finish line.”