The World Health Organization and US health authorities said Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance"due to the large number of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.The US Centers for Disease Control confirmed it is also closely monitoring the variant, in a message on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter."The potential impact of the BA.2.86 mutations are presently unknown and undergoing careful assessment," the WHO said.
"BA.2.86 is the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron," he said in a comment published Friday, referring to the variant that exploded onto the global stage in the winter of 2022, causing a surge in COVID cases. He stressed though that even if BA.2.86 caused a major spike in infections,"we are not expecting to witness comparable levels of severe disease and"Most people on earth have now been vaccinated and/or infected by the virus," he said, pointing out that even if people were reinfected with the new variant,"immune memory will still allow theirThe WHO is currently monitoring upwards of 10 variants and their descent lineages.
The case load represents a rise by 63 percent from the previous 28-day period while deaths were down by 56 percent.
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