CDC Tracks New Variant Of Virus Causes Of COVID-19: Continues To Transfer, Detected In The United States To Israel

United States CDC Headquarters. (Wikimedia Commons/CDC/James Gathany)

JAKARTA - The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said they were tracking a new virus lineage that caused COVID-19 and continued to mutate.

The lineage is named BA.2.86, and has been detected in the United States, Denmark, and Israel, the CDC said in a post on the Twitter platform.

"When we learn more about BA.2.86, the CDC's advice to protect yourself from COVID-19 remains the same," the agency said.

Earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) in a post on Twitter said on Thursday it had classified BA.2.86 as a "monitoring variant" because of the large number of mutations it carries.

The WHO says, so far only a few sequences of variants have been reported from some countries.

The new lineage, which has 36 mutations of the XBB.1.5 COVID variant, is currently dominant, "reminds the early branches of the virus," explains Dr. S. Wesley Long, medical director of diagnostic microbiology in Houston Methodist.

He said it remains to be seen whether BA.2.86 will be able to compete with other types of viruses or have advantages in avoiding the immune response from previous infections or vaccinations.

Preliminary analysis showed the new variant "will have the same or greater ability to escape antibodies caused by the Omicron variant, pre-Omicron and the first generation," said Jesse Bloom, virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, in a slide published on Thursday.

It is known, the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant is a strain targeted by the vaccine in the upcoming COVID booster dose.

The Bloom Slide notes that the most likely scenario is that BA.2.86 is less transmissible than the current dominant variant, so it won't spread widely, but more required sorting data.

"My biggest concern is that it could lead to a bigger spike in cases than we have seen in recent waves," said Dr Long.

"In general, booster doses will still help you fight COVID-19," he said.