BA.5, now dominant U.S. variant, may pose the biggest threat to immune protection yet The FDA recommended that Covid vaccine makers target two omicron subvariants — BA.4 and BA.5 — in new booster shots expected to come this fall. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/omicron-ba5-ba4-covid-symptoms-vaccines-rcna36894
BA.5 Is Spreading Quickly, So It’s a Good Time to Beef Up Your COVID Precautions The variant is highly transmissible, and case numbers are rising. https://www.self.com/story/ba5-variant-omicron-spread Proof of a negative COVID-19 test is no longer required to enter most countries, including the U.S.; every state has dropped its mask mandate; and 66% of Americans recently said they feel as though their lives are at least somewhat the same to how they were pre-pandemic. Yet cases and hospitalizations are rising—again. The pandemic is far from over, and it is even picking up steam as a new subvariant—omicron BA.5, which appears to spread faster than any previously known variant—becomes dominant in the U.S. If you’ve gotten a little lax about pandemic precautions (like getting boosted, always masking in public, using rapid tests before indoor hangouts, staying home when you have symptoms, and getting regular PCR tests) in the past few months, know that, now more than ever, people should be utilizing these mitigation measures to keep themselves and their communities safe. Of the variants the CDC is tracking, BA.5 now makes up more than 50% of all new cases. To put that into perspective of the number of actual sick people, the tracking data shows that, at this time last year (which, to be fair, was when a lot of people were freshly vaccinated and the delta variant wasn’t yet widespread), the average daily number of new cases was just over 9,000. As of July 5, 2022—the most recent data available—that number is a striking 169,000 cases per day (a number that’s likely much, much higher due to the now-widespread use of at-home rapid tests). And at the end of June 2021, there were about 579 new COVID-associated hospital admissions per week, per the CDC; that same figure for June 2022 is a staggering 1,263. One reason case numbers might be so high is that BA.5 doesn’t seem to be curbed by prior infection. Researchers in Australia—where BA.5 is also reigning—have seen that the variant is capable of reinfecting those who have recovered from COVID as soon as four weeks later. That’s true even for folks who’ve recently been infected with an omicron subvariant. It’s never been quite clear how quickly one can be reinfected with the COVID-19 virus, but four weeks is a drastic decline from the previous estimates of anywhere between 3 and 61 months of infection immunity. BA.5 is also more infectious than previous subvariants, according to early research on cases in South Africa. A pre-print publication from South Africa shows that BA.5 could be as infectious as measles—which, until now, was the most infectious virus we knew of. Another factor in the high case numbers across the U.S. is that BA.5 appears to yield less to vaccinations than previous variants. Those who are vaccinated and boosted—meaning 3 total vaccines for people aged 5 to 50 and 4 total vaccines for those 50 and older—remain the best protected against COVID, including the BA.5 subvariant. But “best protection” doesn’t equal “impenetrable immunity,” so even those who are fully vaxxed still need to take precautions. (The FDA is also looking into whether BA.5 should be included in future booster doses, which could roll out later this year.) The CDC currently does not have evidence showing that BA.5 is inherently more severe, but as cases go up (as they currently are), hospitalizations go up, and deaths, in turn, go up. Members of vulnerable populations are still at the greatest risk for severe infection, and when community spread is high (like it is right now), it’s important for people who are at lower risk to protect others by taking the sorts of precautions that have worked demonstrably well for more than two years. The bottom line: Despite an urge to return to normalcy, the rise of BA.5 means it’s time to ramp up the precautions we know are effective. An upside to this otherwise grim situation is that we now know that a combination of masking, outdoor hangouts, better ventilation, staying home when you’re feeling sick or testing positive, and getting vaccinated and boosted are shown to greatly reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The same is true for the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant. So if you’ve been passing by your stash of masks on the way out the door, now’s the time to resume adding them to your mental checklist—keys, phone, wallet, mask. Thinking this is all over is (understandable) wishful thinking, but denial doesn’t keep any of us safe.
I would merely smirk and wonder if TreeFrogTrader and his compatriots now suddenly support "my body, my choice" for abortion... or wonder if this adage for them is limited to vaccination. Of course, the point may become mute with an upcoming severe Covid wave which takes out over 30% of the unvaccinated in a similar manner to MERS. Darwin recognizes how reality works -- and will be grinning at those making stupid decisions to not be vaccinated.
Well, we agree that we will not be following your model which would be to have Fauci decide who gets an abortion or not. Anyway, I was just ticklin your butt and apparently I dislocated your butt plug or something.
Meet BA.2.75 Meet ‘Centaurus,’ the new ‘stealth Omicron.’ It was just found in the U.S. and may escape immunity more than any other COVID strain https://fortune.com/2022/07/07/what-is-centaurus-ba275-new-stealth-omicron-covid-subvariant-cdc/ A new Omicron subvariant on the radar of the World Health Organization—one some experts say could be the most immune-evasive yet—has been identified in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Fortune on Thursday. There have been two cases of BA.2.75, dubbed “Centaurus,” detected in the U.S., with the first being identified on June 14, a spokesperson for the CDC said. The CDC does not publicly report on emerging variants until they comprise 1% of cases. Thus, current cases of BA.2.75 are being reported on the agency’s data tracker under BA.2 cases, which comprised less than 3% of reported U.S. cases last week, according to data released on Tuesday. Centaurus has recently risen to prominence in India, competing with the BA.5 Omicron subvariant that is sweeping the globe. WHO officials said they were tracking the ultra-new subvariant at a Wednesday press conference and released some information about it via Twitter on Tuesday. BA.2.75 has been reported in “about 10 other countries” and has not been declared a variant of concern, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO's chief scientist, said in a Tuesday tweet. Transmissibility, severity, and potential for immune evasion are currently unknown, she added. But some experts are raising potential red flags. Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said Monday the new subvariant’s mutations “could make immune escape worse than what we’re seeing now” with BA.5 and BA.4, both of which are subvariants known to evade immunity from both vaccination and prior infection. BA.2.75 was first detected in India in early June. Along with the usual Omicron mutations, it has as many as nine additional changes, none of which are concerning individually. “But all appearing together at once is another matter,” Tom Peacock, a virologist at the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College in London, said recently in a tweet. Its “apparent rapid growth and wide geographical spread” are concerning, he added. Aside from India, the virus has been detected in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K., according to a Tuesday statement by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, citing Ulrich Elling, a researcher with Austria’s Institute of Molecular Biotechnology. Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Fortune on Thursday that it’s unclear if Centaurus can “really take off” in the face of BA.5 and relative BA.4. Centaurus “may just spread for some period of time until it runs into BA.5 and is outcompeted for people to infect,” Adalja said. “I don’t know at this time that BA.2.75 will be anything more than a regional issue that eventually gets overwhelmed by BA.5.” The ultra-new variant could also mirror another “stealth Omicron” spinoff, BA.2.12.1, in that it could take over for a period—as BA.2.12.1 did in the U.S., becoming dominant over BA.2 in May and remaining dominant until BA.4 and BA.5 pushed it down in late June—until the next more transmissible variant comes along, he said. As to whether Centaurus might cause more severe disease, such variants are “not going to be something evolution pushes for,” he said, adding that those with more severe disease are typically at home or in a hospital, too sick to go out and spread the virus. BA.5 is now dominant in the U.S. The previous heavy hitter, BA.2, is now a shadow of its former self. “The Omicron subvariant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,” Topol wrote last week as the subvariant was well on its way to becoming dominant in the U.S. “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond what has been seen before. A recent study out of South Africa found that those who had been previously infected with Omicron but not vaccinated experienced a nearly eightfold drop in neutralizing antibodies when exposed to BA.4 and BA.5. Those who had been vaccinated and previously infected with Omicron saw a milder threefold decrease.
I may dig into the story of this Centaurus sub-variant to research about these two cases because I'm curious if they know if the Centaurus occurred in those that were not vaccinated, vaccinated but not boosted, immuno-compromised, elderly with co-morbidities or what ??? wrbtrader
BA.2.75, an Even More Super-Contagious New Omicron Strain, Is Spreading Around the World https://www.thedailybeast.com/ba275...-omicron-strain-is-spreading-around-the-world
The rise of a new ‘Deltacron’? BA.5 combines the worst traits of Omicron with the potential for severity reminiscent of Delta, experts say https://fortune.com/2022/07/12/delt...cron-with-delta-covid19-coronavirus-sarscov2/ Relatively new COVID-19 subvariant BA.5 takes some of Omicron’s worst traits—transmissibility and immune evasion—to a new level. But it also combines them with a penchant for affecting the lungs reminiscent of the Delta variant that hit the U.S last summer and fall, according to two recent studies. In the case of Delta, COVID tended to accumulate in and affect the lungs, potentially resulting in more severe disease. Until recently, a silver lining of Omicron has been its tendency to instead accumulate in the upper respiratory tract, causing symptoms more similar to a cold or the flu. BA.5 is different, according to a study published June 10 on medRxiv, a Yale– and British Medical Journal–affiliated website that publishes studies not yet certified by peer review. Recent reports show BA.5 shifting back to the lower respiratory tract—at least in animal models—“with a potential increase in disease severity and infection within lung tissue,” researchers from Australia’s Kirby Institute wrote. They referenced another May preprint study that found BA.5 and close relative BA.4 replicate more efficiently in the alveoli of human lungs than so-called stealth Omicron, BA.2. “BA.5 not only gives the virus greater antibody evasion potential, but concurrently has changed [where it tends to accumulate], along with an increased transmission potential in the community,” the Kirby Institute authors write. The scenario calls to mind the term Deltacron, which referred to a Delta-Omicron hybrid identified in the U.S. this spring that never took off. Back then, the term was used “prematurely,” Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote in a Sunday blog post on the studies. Now, for BA.5, the term might be more appropriate, even though the subvariant isn’t a true hybrid. “The ability to infect cells for BA.5 is more akin to Delta than the previous Omicron family of variants,” Topol wrote. While BA.4 and BA.5 led to a wave of infections in South Africa this spring, they were relatively mild, with manageable rates of hospitalization. The U.S. and Europe, however, are currently seeing an increase in BA.5 hospitalizations, though well below levels seen in prior waves. The difference could be due to the fact that South Africa saw a wave of the COVID variant Beta in late 2020 and early 2021 that the West did not, potentially conferring better immunity to Omicron subvariants, Topol wrote. BA.4 and BA.5—dominant in many countries across the globe—were first detected in the U.S. in late March, as Fortune previously reported, but have quickly taken over the global scene. BA.5 alone caused about 54% of COVID infections in the U.S. two weeks ago, according to data released last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The Omicron subvariant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,” Topol recently wrote. “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond what has been seen before. The jury is still out on whether current vaccines hold up against BA.5. But given that vaccines were 15% less effective against Omicron than they were against the Delta variant, even with a booster, “it would not be at all surprising to me to see further decline of protection against hospitalizations and deaths,” Topol wrote.
This New COVID Variant Is Shaping Up to Be a Déjà Vu Nightmare BLAST FROM THE PAST A familiar mutation may give this COVID strain the edge it needs to wreak havoc. https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-ba46-covid-variant-is-shaping-up-to-be-a-deja-vu-nightmare The world has built up a lot of immunity in the nine months since the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus became dominant, driving a record wave of infections. That immunity from vaccines and past infection is helping to keep down hospitalizations and deaths even as Omicron’s offspring—a succession of subvariants—have become dominant, one after one. Now the virus is trying to find a way around our antibodies. A new subvariant, BA.4.6, is beginning to outcompete its predecessor, BA.5. Its advantages include a particular mutation to the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it to grab onto and infect our cells. We’ve seen this R346T mutation before. And every time it’s appeared, it’s been associated with forms of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen with an increased ability to dodge our antibodies. A quality epidemiologists call “immune-escape.” If BA.4.6 becomes dominant, it could reverse the encouraging trend we’ve seen in most countries in recent weeks toward fewer infections, fewer hospitalizations, fewer deaths. It’s a reminder that the novel coronavirus is a living, evolving thing. As we adapt to it, it adapts to us. “Viruses in general mutate to be more infectious and to avoid our immunity,” Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington Institute for Health, told The Daily Beast. Don’t panic quite yet. “One thing I try not to do is get too excited for every new variant that pops up,” Peter Hotez, an expert in vaccine development at Baylor College, told The Daily Beast. Most coronavirus variants and subvariants appear and disappear without significantly changing the pandemic’s overall direction. Plus, there’s a new kind of vaccine in the works that could help us to fight, long-term, even the worst forms of COVID. Eventually. All the same, BA.4.6 warrants close attention. It’s the seventh major subvariant of Omicron, which first appeared in Africa back in November. It spread fast, outcompeting and replacing the previous major variant, Delta. Epidemiologists have described Omicron and its subvariants as the most contagious respiratory viruses they’ve ever seen. Omicron is four times as transmissible as Delta but half as lethal. So Omicron resulted in the worst-ever day for new COVID infections when a record 4.1 million people got sick on Jan. 19. That’s a fivefold increase over Delta’s worst day back in April last year. But just 13,000 people died on the worst day for Omicron deaths on Feb. 9—thousands fewer than died on Delta’s most lethal day back in January 2021. It’s not hard to explain the growing gap between infections and deaths as the pandemic grinds toward its fourth year. Billions of people have been at least partially vaccinated. Billions have caught COVID and survived. The combination of vaccine-induced and natural antibodies has created a global wall of immunity that has blunted the worst outcomes. But with BA.4.6, the virus is trying to find a way around that wall. “There’s a huge selective pressure for immune-escape, especially now that the great majority of the population has some degree of immunity, from immunization, infection or both,” Keith Jerome, a University of Washington virologist, told The Daily Beast. SARS-CoV-2 is, in essence, fighting for its own survival—trying out mutations until it settles on one that might give it the upper hand. R346T is one of those mutations. It’s not totally clear how the virus came up with the change. It’s possible Omicron mixed with an older form of SARS-CoV-2 in a person who’s gotten sick more than once. It’s possible, in other words, that BA.4.6 is a “recombinant” subvariant that picked up its most advantageous quality from one of its predecessors. That one change to the spike protein appears to make the virus somewhat harder for our antibodies to recognize. With R346T, the virus has a better chance of slipping right past our immune systems and causing an infection. Even if we’ve been vaccinated. Even if we’ve also caught and gotten over COVID in the past. Greater immune-escape means more and worse infections. We’ve been lucky with Omicron in the sense that, even as the variant and its subvariants have driven back-to-back-to-back waves in cases since November, hospitalizations and deaths haven’t risen in proportion. It’s still an open question how much worse BA.4.6 might be and how far it might spread. Health agencies all over the world have been tracking the subvariant for months now. As BA.5 cases plateau, BA.4.6 is outcompeting BA.5—but not everywhere. The BA.4.6 hotspots include some Australian states and parts of the U.S. Midwest. So far, BA.4.6 accounts for around four percent of new cases in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. The proportion of BA.4.6 is set to rise as BA.5 declines. BA.4.6 appears to have only a 10-percent growth advantage over BA.5, but that advantage has been growing over time. If there’s good news in BA.4.6’s rise, it’s that for all its worrying mutations it’s still an Omicron sublineage—and still has a lot of mutations in common with BA.5, BA.4, BA.2 and BA.1. That means the Omicron-specific boosters that Pfizer and Moderna are developing for their messenger-RNA vaccines, and which U.S. regulators are on track to approve in coming weeks, should still work at least somewhat against BA.4.6. BA.4.6 isn’t the worst case scenario. That would be a subvariant—or brand-new variant—with strong immune-escape. A form of SARS-CoV-2 that has mutated so much that all those antibodies we’ve built up over the past three years barely recognize it. The epidemiological community is divided over how likely this variant is to evolve. Some are confident that respiratory viruses such as the flu and the novel-coronavirus tend to get overall milder over time as they become “endemic”—that is, always present but usually manageable. Others fear near-total immune-escape is all but inevitable for cleverer viruses as they tirelessly fight to survive. “This idea that each subsequent variant causes less severe illness—I don’t buy that,” Hotez said. It comes down to genetics—the virus trading one quality for another as it strives to spread to more and more hosts. “The trick for the virus is to find a way to escape immunity while still maintaining the ability to infect new people efficiently,” Jerome explained. “The virus has been very successful so far at doing so, but the big question is whether it can continue to do so, or instead will ultimately exhaust all the possible tricks to do so, and settle down into a more manageable level of endemicity. There’s no way to know for sure yet.” A variant or subvariant with near-total immune-escape could drag us back to the most terrifying days of the early pandemic, when almost no one had immunity—or any way of developing immunity without surviving a very dangerous infection. But BA.4.6 with its R346T mutation and potential for immune-escape might be a preview of that worst-case scenario. It might also be an argument for the pharmaceutical industry and health agencies to redouble their efforts to create universal vaccines that work against SARS-CoV-2 and every other major coronavirus, of which there are scores. There are around a dozen major “pan-coronavirus” vaccines in development. The two leading efforts are at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in Norway and the U.S. government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They’re spending $200 million and $43 million, respectively, to develop their new universal jabs. Trials are still months, if not years, away. “We’re moving piecemeal toward a more universal coronavirus vaccine,” Hotez said. Pan-coronavirus vaccines might be slightly less effective than the best mRNA vaccines were at their peak effectiveness (against serious illness and death) of more than 90 percent, back in late 2020. But they’d be broadly effective, keeping people alive and out of the hospital even as the virus mutates again and again in order to survive.