On Friday, August 17, 2023, the World Health Organization posted a short notice about a coronavirus lineage most people had never heard of. BA.2.86, it said, was now a “variant under monitoring,” chosen “due to the large number of mutations it carries.” Only a few sequences had turned up so far, in a handful of countries.
That handful was enough to get scientists talking. Business Today reported that the lineage was first reported on July 24, and that it carries more than 30 mutations, some of them on the spike protein, the structure the virus uses to get into cells. Fortune put it the same way: 30 or more changes separating it from other Omicron strains. Most circulating variants differ from the last by a small handful.
Where it showed up
Denmark and Israel reported it first. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed the same day, saying it had found the lineage in the United States too, in Michigan. A day later the UK Health Security Agency confirmed a case in England. Fortune reported that the patient is elderly, in hospital, and has no recent travel history. By the end of the month Germany’s Robert Koch Institute had its own detection, according to DW.
The nickname arrived fast. Variant watchers on social media called it Pirola, after an asteroid near Jupiter, though the WHO does not use it.
What the experts said
Dr S. Wesley Long, of Houston Methodist, told Reuters the lineage “harkens back to an earlier branch” of the virus and counted 36 mutations. “My biggest concern would be that it could cause a bigger spike in cases than what we have seen in recent waves,” he said.
Francois Balloux, a professor at University College London, called it “the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron.” Then he steadied the conversation. Even in the worst case, he said, a major wave would probably not bring the severe illness and deaths of the Alpha, Delta or early Omicron periods, because most people on Earth have been vaccinated, infected, or both. Immune memory, he argued, should help the body control a reinfection far more effectively. He still called a big wave “unwelcome.”
The CDC was blunter about the uncertainty. BA.2.86 “may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines,” the agency said. The WHO, for its part, said preliminary data suggest vaccines will still protect.
A rung on the ladder
Monitoring is the lowest of the WHO’s three alert levels. Above it come “variant of interest” and “variant of concern.” At the time, EG.5, XBB.1.5 and XBB.1.16 sat in the middle tier. Being watched means countries are asked to review how the strain behaves, nothing more.
The timing mattered for families across the region and elsewhere. DW noted that many countries had stopped reporting Covid deaths and hospitalisations, leaving thin data just as the WHO warned of “concerning trends” ahead of the northern winter. Experts urged governments to keep reporting. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, said that although Covid-19 is “no longer a global health emergency, it remains a global health threat,” and that BA.2.86 showed why countries must keep up surveillance.
The WHO said more data were needed to understand how widely the variant had spread, adding that “the number of mutations warrants attention.”
Sources
- WHO tracks highly mutated Covid variant BA.2.86: All you need to know – BusinessToday
- BA.2.86, a new, highly mutated COVID variant, has been detected in the U.S. Why the CDC and WHO are monitoring it | Fortune
- COVID-19 variant BA.2.86 found in Germany
- The WHO is closely monitoring another new COVID-19 variant, nicknamed Pirola. Here's what we know about BA.2.86 – ABC News
