Two new coronavirus strains have appeared in the United Kingdom with more than 700 cases identified across the country, The Independent reported.
The new variants detected are XBB and BQ.1.
🚨 BREAKING NEWS: Two new Covid variants found in UK with hundreds of cases detected https://t.co/hkmRohIce0
— The Independent (@Independent) October 28, 2022
According to scientists, both XBB and BQ.1 are exceedingly immunological evasive and may potentially be impervious to current vaccines.
More than 700 cases are of the mutant BQ.1 variety, as well as 18 cases of the so-called XBB variant, have been identified, The Independent reported.
Experts are concerned that a “swarm” of such subvariants may cause a fresh Covid wave to sweep across Europe and North America by the end of November. Descandants of the highly transmissible Omicron form are XBB and BQ.1.
According to the UK Health and Security Agency, studies on the new variations are ongoing, and the body is actively monitoring the situation.
According to the Biozentrum research facility at the University of Basel, which has been monitoring the virus’s evolution since the epidemic began, there is a “collective” of subvariants that are capable of spreading quickly.
“The tendencies we’re witnessing right now are significantly different from what we’ve seen before,” Cornelius Roemer, a computational biologist with Biozentrum, The Independent reported.
“Omicron was maybe the first variant that was good at evading immunity and that’s why it caused such a large wave. Now for the first time, we see many lineages, many variants emerging parallel that all have very similar mutations and that all manage to still evade immunity pretty well,” he stated.
Professor Lawrence Young of the University of Warwick revealed last month that there were Omicron subvariants raising concern in early data, including hints of being able to escape immunisation, The Independent reported.
However, he warned that due to the reduction in testing capacity, the UK risks being oblivious to these developing varieties.
WHO’s TAG-VE statement on Omicron sublineages BQ.1 and XBB:
World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) met on October 24, 2022, as part of its ongoing work to track variants, to discuss the latest evidence on the Omicron variant of concern, and how its evolution is currently unfolding, in light of high levels of population immunity in many settings and country differences in the immune landscape.
The public health implications of the development of certain Omicron variants, especially XBB and its sublineages (marked as XBB*) and BQ.1 and its sublineages (indicated as BQ.1*), were explored in particular.
Based on current information, the TAG-VE does not think that the overall phenotype of XBB* and BQ.1* differs sufficiently from each other, or from other Omicron lineages with additional immune escape mutations, to merit the classification of novel variants of concern and the assignment of a new label.
“The two sublineages are still part of Omicron, which is still a variation of concern,” the statement said.
The regional immunological landscape has a substantial influence on the possible impact of these variations. While reinfections have become a larger proportion of all illnesses, this is most noticeable in the context of non-Omicron initial infections. With decreasing immune responses from initial waves of Omicron infection and continued evolution of Omicron variations, reinfections are predicted to increase.
(With Inputs From Agencies)
