WHO, US health authorities tracking new Covid-19 variant BA.2.86

Geneva - The World Health Organisation (WHO) and US health authorities said on Friday that they are closely monitoring a new variant of Covid-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is not yet known.

The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance “due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries”, it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on Friday said the first case of the BA.2.86 had been detected in the country in an individual with no recent travel history.

So far, the variant has been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States.

The US Centres for Disease Control confirmed it is also monitoring the variant in a message on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

There are only four known sequences of the variant, the WHO has said.

“The potential impact of the BA.2.86 mutations are presently unknown and undergoing careful assessment,” the WHO said.

Dr Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology at University College London, said the attention drawn by the new variant is warranted. “BA.2.86 is the most striking Sars-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since Omicron,” he said in a comment published on Friday, referring to the variant that exploded onto the global stage in the winter of 2022, causing a surge in Covid-19 cases.

“Over the coming weeks, we will see how well BA.2.86 will be faring relative to other Omicron sub-variants,” he said.

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 death than we did earlier in the pandemic when the Alpha, Delta or Omicron variants spread”.

“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 their immune system to kick in and control the infection far more effectively”.

The WHO is monitoring upwards of 10 variants and their descent lineages.

Most countries that had set up surveillance systems for the virus have since dismantled them, determining it is no longer as severe and thus could not justify the expense – a move the WHO has denounced, calling instead for stronger monitoring.

In the last reporting period between July 17 and Aug 13, more than 1.4 million new cases of Covid-19 were detected and more than 2,300 deaths reported, a WHO statement said.

The caseload represents a rise by 63 per cent from the previous 28-day period, while deaths were down by 56 per cent.

As at Aug 13, there were more than 769 million cases of Covid-19 confirmed and more than 6.9 million deaths worldwide, although the real toll is expected to be much higher because many cases went undetected. AFP