COVID-19 strain Cicada, that has undergone about 75 mutations, spreading in the US
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "COVID-19 strain Cicada, that has undergone about 75 mutations, spreading in the US")
COVID-19 BA.3.2 variant has been detected in several states in the US. Photograph: (Unsplash)
The SARS-CoV-2 BA.3.2 variant of the COVID-19 virus has been detected in several states in America. The CDC has warned that the variant has undergone about 75 mutations and can evade the protection offered by the vaccines.
A new Covid variant from South Africa is slowly spreading in the United States, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said. The SARS-CoV-2 BA.3.2 variant has been reported in 23 countries as of February 11, according to the health agency. BA.3.2 first appeared in South Africa in November 2024. Scientists have warned that it has the ability to evade all immune defences. It believes the 2025-2026 Covid vaccines are not effective against the strain. The spike protein in this Covid variant has undergone about 75 mutations, which means the vaccines trained to recognise and fight the spike protein are unable to do so. CDC says this could lead to a rise in the number of infections, although not necessarily making them severe. CDC has been tracking the strain through its Traveller-Based Genomic Surveillance program. Till mid-March, BA.3.2 has reportedly been detected in six travellers who travelled to the US, and in over two dozen patients across 29 states and Puerto Rico.
First case of BA.3.2 Covid strain in the US
The strain of the Covid virus has also been detected in 260 wastewater sites, which is the first sign that a strain is spreading its roots in a region. However, CDC data shows that only about half a per cent of recent virus sequences have had the strain present. The first case of the BA.3.2 strain was confirmed in the US in June 2025 in a traveller from the Netherlands. "BA.3.2 represents a new lineage of SARS-CoV-2, genetically distinct from the JN.1 lineages (including LP.8.1 and XFG) that have circulated in the United States since January 2024," according to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
BA.3.2 cases saw a spike in Europe around September last year, and roughly 30 per cent of all cases in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands comprised this strain. But it has not become a dominant strain, which could be because it does not bind well to human cells compared to other variants. This is preventing it from spreading at a fast pace. Experts say that even if the new strain has the ability to evade protection offered by current vaccines, they are still important to prevent severe disease. In India, no cases of the BA.3.2 strain have been officially reported yet.
