What do we know about BA.2.75.2, the subvariant of the subvariant
The discovery of a new sub-variant is no longer newsworthy – there are 230 of them only for Omicron – but the appearance of BA.2.75.2, 'daughter' of Centaurus, is being particularly watched. Here because
But is the pandemic over or not? As Repubblica wrote a few days ago, for the president of the United States, Joe Biden, "yes", for the World Health Organization (WHO) "almost" and for the European Medicines Agency (Ema) "not at all" .
Three points of reference with three conflicting opinions. Then, with the vaccination campaign that has stalled, the restrictions that have fallen and the infections that have increased again, the virus seems to have magically reappeared to remind us that perhaps the EMA is right more than anyone.
And to do so, this time Covid-19 has decided to manifest itself in the guise of the Omicron sub-variant named BA.2.75.2, already given for "special observation" and also declared on Biorxiv "able to evade the immune system".
THE SPEED OF OMICRON TO CHANGE
From Omicron, which was the undisputed star of 2022, more than 230 descendants and more than 30 recombinants emerged according to WHO monitoring.
It is no coincidence that a few days ago Marco Cavaleri, head of the strategy for health threats and vaccines of the EMA, said that Sars-Cov-2 "is changing at a crazy speed and continues to do so" becoming "still rather unpredictable".
BA.2.75.2: THE SUBVARIANT OF THE SUBVARIANT
Until now, Omicron's sub-variants ranged from BA.1 to BA.5 but, as Focus states, "some of them have not only 'daughters', but even 'grandchildren', such as BA.2.75.2, which apparently much more skilled in dribbling the immune defenses than the others ".
The latter is descended from BA.2.75, the sub-variant of Omicron 2 renamed Centaurus , but has 3 further mutations on the Spike protein.
WHY DO YOU GET ATTENTION THEN?
WHO, in its focus on variants, recalled that although all of these Omicron sub-variants have "several additional mutations", "most of them do not deserve concern, not even based on current knowledge of relevant genetic sites".
So why all this attention to BA.2.75.2? As anticipated, Centaurus, 'mother' of BA.2.75.2, “is monitored [by WHO, ed ] for 9 additional mutations observed in the peak compared to her 'parent' BA.2 lineage”.
One of these mutations, WHO argues, "has been associated with immune runaway".
THE DATA ON CENTAURUS
However, the WHO at the moment reassures that "the global prevalence of BA.2.75 is low (1.26% at week 35), but has increased in recent weeks". There are about fifty countries in which it has been identified.
WHY ARE WE STILL AT OMICRON?
Omicron was first identified almost a year ago, since then all sub-variants descending from the same lineage have followed one another and, therefore, the WHO had no reason to indicate a new letter of the Greek alphabet since it does so only in the case where a variant is so new that it introduces new risks to public health.
THE FORECASTS OF THE EXPERTS
While Biden declared that "the pandemic in the United States is over" it is also true that he later corrected himself by saying that "the pandemic is no longer the same". More or less on the same wavelength the director of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, according to whom "the end of the pandemic is in sight".
The EMA, on the other hand, went really against the tide stating : “We don't know how Biden came to his conclusion. In Europe we consider the pandemic to be still ongoing ”. These were the words of Steffen Thirstrup, the Agency's medical director. And Cavaleri, for the avoidance of doubt, added: "We must prepare for a new wave of infections, in line with the trend shown by the virus in the last two years".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/cosa-sappiamo-di-ba-2-75-2-la-sottovariante-della-sottovariante/ on Tue, 27 Sep 2022 07:36:29 +0000.