COVID-19 variant BA.2.86 may not be as bad as previously thought, study suggests

Recent lab tests in the United States suggest that the currently circulating COVID-19 variantBA.2.86is less contagious as our immune system is able to fight it off better. The results were deduced by two teams of US scientists that tested the antibodies from vaccinated and infected Americans in a lab experiment.

When it comes to variant BA.2.86, which is also known as Pirola, our immune systems can recognise and fight off this variant better than the circulating offshoots of the XBB variant.

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The BA.2.86 variant is descended from a different Omicron variant. A total of 29 cases of COVID-19 have been detected with BA.2.86 across four continents, but experts suspect it is more widespread.

What do lab tests suggest?

The lab tests suggest that people who had the most robust responses against BA.2.86 were those who were within six months of an infection with the XBB subvariant. This further suggests that updated COVID-19 vaccines, which are designed to fight off XBB 1.5, will provide added protection against a range of circulating COVID-19 lineages, including BA.2.86.

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“Two independent labs have basically shown that BA.2.86 essentially is not a further immune escape compared with current variants,” Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and leader of one of the labs, told CNN.

Their results align with earlier experiments by labs in China and Sweden. Taken together, the data suggests that BA.2.86 will not be as troublesome as experts had feared. In short, this one seems to be a “scariant.”

FL.1.5.1: Another fast-growing variant

Another variant, FL.1.5.1, which is causing an estimated 15 per cent of new COVID-19 infections in the US has a different story. This fast-growing descendant of the XBB recombinant variant has a constellation of mutations that have raised concerns among the variant trackers. In lab testing, it was the most immune-evasive.

“If there wasn’t so much hype about BA.2.86, that would actually be the focus of the paper,” Barouch said.

How these lab tests were conducted?

Barouch and his team used pseudoviruses. They built the spikes of the BA.2.86 virus and attached them to the body of a different virus.

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Then they took plasma from the blood of 66 Americans who had been vaccinated with monovalent vaccines only, who had gotten bivalent vaccines, or who had recently recovered from an XBB infection. Then they tested these samples to know how well their antibodies neutralised 10 Omicron subvariants, including BA.2.86.

(With inputs from agencies)

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