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NEW DELHI\u00a0 \u2013 The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that\u2019s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States.<\/p>\nNEW DELHI\u00a0 \u2013 The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that\u2019s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States.<\/p>\n
Scientists say the variant \u2013 called BA.2.75 \u2013 may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It\u2019s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,\u201d said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. \u201cBut it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase.\u201d Whether it will outcompete BA.5, he said, is yet to be determined.<\/p>\n
Still, the fact that it has already been detected in many parts of the world even with lower levels of viral surveillance \u201cis an early indication it is spreading,\u201d said Shishi Luo, head of infectious diseases for Helix, a company that supplies viral sequencing information to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n
The latest mutant has been spotted in several distant states in India, and appears to be spreading faster than other variants there, said Lipi Thukral, a scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi. It\u2019s also been detected in about 10 other countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Two cases were recently identified on the West Coast of the U.S., and Helix identified a third U.S. case last week.<\/p>\n
Fueling experts\u2019 concerns are a large number of mutations separating this new variant from omicron predecessors. Some of those mutations are in areas that relate to the spike protein and could allow the virus to bind onto cells more efficiently, Binnicker said.<\/p>\n
Another concern is that the genetic tweaks may make it easier for the virus to skirt past antibodies \u2014 protective proteins made by the body in response to a vaccine or infection from an earlier variant.<\/p>\n
But experts say vaccines and boosters are still the best defense against severe COVID-19. In the fall it\u2019s likely the U.S. will see updated formulations of the vaccine being developed that target more recent omicron strains.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome may say, \u2018Well, vaccination and boosting hasn\u2019t prevented people from getting infected.\u2019 And, yes, that is true,\u201d he said. \u201cBut what we have seen is that the rates of people ending up in the hospital and dying have significantly decreased. As more people have been vaccinated, boosted or naturally infected, we are starting to see the background levels of immunity worldwide creep up.\u201d<\/p>\n
It may take several weeks to get a sense of whether the latest omicron mutant may affect the trajectory of the pandemic. Meanwhile Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at India\u2019s Christian Medical College in Vellore, said the growing concern over the variant underlines the need for more sustained efforts to track and trace viruses that combine genetic efforts with real world information about who is getting sick and how badly. \u201cIt is important that surveillance isn\u2019t a start-stop strategy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Luo said BA.2.75 is another reminder that the coronavirus is continually evolving \u2013 and spreading.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like to return to pre-pandemic life, but we still need to be careful,\u201d she said. \u201c We need to accept that we\u2019re now living with a higher level of risk than we used to.\u201d (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW DELHI\u00a0 \u2013 The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that\u2019s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States. Scientists say the variant \u2013 called BA.2.75 \u2013 may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It\u2019s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5. \u201cIt\u2019s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,\u201d said Matthew…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":618736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47748],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-618735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malayalamdailynews.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}