Highly Mutated Variant of COVID-19 Virus Puts Scientists on Alert As They Scramble To Understand How Far It Has Spread

Experts are racing to determine whether a highly mutated coronavirus is nothing to worry about or has the potential to spread globally.

New Lineage of Coronavirus

On August 17, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added a new lineage of COVID-19 virus to its watch list. The new variant, officially designated as BA.2.86, was nicknamed Pirola by variant hunters on social media.

The virus is also an addition to the SARS-CoV-2 variant monitoring list of the World Health Organization (WHO), getting attention despite the small number of officially reported cases. WHO designated it as a variant under monitoring, encouraging countries to monitor and report any sequences they find.

As of August 19, only seven confirmed cases were reported by the CDC, but it has been detected in multiple countries. On August 20, the variant was spotted by experts in Israel. After that, Denmark reported three sequences of the virus. This was followed by two more sequences reported in the U.S. and the U.K., respectively.

According to Morten Rasmussen from the Stratens Serum Institut, it is unusual for coronavirus to show significant changes and develop 30 new mutations. The last time such a big change was seen was during the appearance of Omicron. Currently, scientists stressed that it is still too early to announce anything about the severity or contagiousness of the new variant.

The lineage was assumed to have descended from an Omicron subvariant called BA.2, a version of coronavirus that caused large case spikes in early 2022. However, the spike protein of the Pirola virus carries 34 changes relative to BA.2. People with long-term COVID-19 infections showed many spike mutations, and Pirola likely emerged from one of these chronic infections.

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Why are Scientists Following It So Closely?

After the appearance of the Omicron variant, the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 began to follow a predictable course. It was found that new variants successfully emerged from circulating lineages after gaining key mutations that enabled their spread.

However, BA.2.86 differs from other widespread coronavirus variants, such as Alpha and Delta. According to viral evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington, many of the changes in the Pirola virus happen in regions of the spike protein targeted by the infection-blocking antibodies. Because of this, there is a likelihood that the variant will escape the neutralizing antibodies triggered by previous viral infections and vaccine shots.

The geographical distribution is another feature of the new variant that has scientists paying attention to. None of the cases seem connected, suggesting that BA.2.86 may already be fairly widespread. In the UK, the Health Security Agency reported the case of an infected person with no recent travel history, indicating a degree of community transmission within the country.

Bloom stresses that the public should not be alarmed by the new variant. Even if Pirola becomes widespread and shows its skill in avoiding the antibodies, other forms of immunity can keep most people from getting seriously ill if they ever get infected by the virus.