The mutation was named BA.2.86 and was found in the United States, Denmark and Israel, the CDC said on the X messaging platform, formerly known as Twitter (the service is blocked in the Russian Federation). “Scientists are currently working to obtain more information about the newly identified lineage, and we will share more information as it becomes available,” CDC spokeswoman Kathleen Conley told CBS News.
The World Health Organization has announced that it has classified BA.2.86 as a “variant under surveillance” due to its large number of mutations. The rapid escalation of this strain to the WHO “watched variant” category is unusual. Only four cases of this variant have been recorded worldwide. Virustrackers officially designated the strain as BA.2.86 less than a day ago.
It is too early to say whether this option will be more dangerous than the currently circulating strains of the virus. The UN agency said more data is needed to understand the threat that BA.2.86 could pose, but it has sped up classification due to the large number of mutations. They include some changes to key parts of the virus that can help it better evade the body’s immunity from previous infections or vaccinations. “The deep mutational scanning indicates that the BA.2.86 variant will have the same or greater escape than XBB.1.5 from the antibodies produced by the Omicron to first-generation Omicron variants,” said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Cancer Center Hutch, adding that BA.2.86 has 36 mutations compared to the XBB.1.5 variant.
