Title: Highly Mutated COVID-19 Variant BA.2.86 Detected in England, UKHSA Reports
Date: September 8, 2023
Byline: Khushi Mandowara
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced on Friday that 34 COVID-19 cases in England have been linked to the highly mutated variant BA.2.86.
Compared to the dominant variant XBB.1.5, which was prevalent throughout most of 2023, the BA.2.86 variant carries more than 35 mutations in key sections of the virus. This number is comparable to the Omicron variant that caused record-breaking infections.
As of September 4, out of the 34 confirmed cases of BA.2.86, five patients have been hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported in connection with this emerging variant.
The UKHSA revealed that 28 of these confirmed cases were identified in a single outbreak at a care home in Norfolk.
In response to the discovery of this variant, Moderna and Pfizer announced on Wednesday that their updated COVID-19 vaccines have demonstrated strong efficacy against the BA.2.86 subvariant.
The BA.2.86 variant was initially detected in Denmark on July 24. Since then, it has been identified in other symptomatic patients, routine airport screenings, and wastewater samples in countries such as Switzerland, South Africa, Israel, Denmark, and the United States.
While it is still early to draw conclusions about the behavior of BA.2.86 in the wider UK population, the UKHSA stated that the variant may be highly transmissible in close-contact settings.
Renu Bindra, incident director at the UKHSA, stated, “It is clear that there is some degree of widespread community transmission, both in the UK and globally, and we are working to ascertain the full extent of this.”
Further investigation and monitoring are necessary to understand the potential impact and spread of the BA.2.86 variant.
[Reporting by Khushi Mandowara in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty]
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