The world rapidly got concerned when it found out that the Omicron variant of COVID (aka the BA.1 variant) is spreading a lot faster than the other strains. But everybody began to calm down at the news that Omicron also causes less severe disease compared to the other strains.
As for now, the BA.2 variant of the coronavirus, which is also a subvariant of Omicron, is under the spotlight. BA.2 is known to spread even faster than Omicron, and it wasn’t much until scientists started to wonder if it also causes more severe disease. New research seems to reveal ‘the monster beneath the bed’.
BA.2 could be causing more severe disease
According to a new article posted on CNN, the new study in question claims what many had been fearing: the BA.2 COVID variant might have the potential of causing more severe disease than Omicron and could even be a lot more difficult to defeat. For instance, BA.2 could be resistant to the monoclonal antibody known as sotrovimab.
It seems that BA.2 resembles older variants of COVID, such as Delta, and not in ways that we would expect. The Omicron subvariant appears to cause a similar level of illness. But obviously, it spreads a lot faster than those older variants.
Last but not least, BA.2 appears to be good at bypassing a significant part of the immunity granted by COVID vaccines, similar to Omicron. But this could be solved with the so-called ‘booster’ shot.
Dr. Daniel Rhoads from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio declared as CNN quotes:
It might be, from a human’s perspective, a worse virus than BA.1 and might be able to transmit better and cause worse disease.
Kei Sato from the University of Tokyo and also the leader of the study, said that many countries need to figure out a way to detect the BA.2 variant specifically.
The new research was posted as a preprint study on bioRxiv.