Covid19 coronavirus virus | Photo: Archive/AT
The identification of a new variant of the coronavirus that may be behind the surge in Covid cases in the United States is sparking an alert for the rest of the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
It’s called XBB.1.5, is a descendant of XBB and has been identified in at least 29 countries. In the US, it replaced the omicron variants BA.5 and BQ.1 used in some places in the country, such as B. New York, accounted for more than 75% of the samples.
In a presentation by the WHO technical group this Wednesday (4), the epidemiologist and head of the company’s Covid group, Maria van Kerkhove, said that “the variant is the most transmissible so far because of the mutations it has accumulated”. and that it has immune escape, that is, it manages to escape immunity conferred by vaccines and previous infections.
According to the epidemiologist, the WHO Technical Committee met last Tuesday (3) to discuss the increase in Covid cases in China, but finally also discussed the rapid spread of XBB.1.5, which the committee is already showing signs of concern .
“The more circular this variant is, the more opportunities it will have to change, and with that we expect new waves of infection worldwide, although we don’t yet have any indication of the possible severity or clinical picture,” he said.
Kerkhove also said XBB.1.5 may be growing in several countries around the world, but the delay in processing the samples makes it difficult to estimate the size of the scenario. She said there is a clear growth advantage for the variant in the Northeastern United States, where it has managed to become dominant relative to other variants.
In a study published Dec. 13 in the journal Cell, scientists warn about the leakage of antibodies from subvariants of the BQ and XBB lineages, including BQ.1, identified in Brazil in October, and XBB.1, which gave birth is to the variant in circulation.
According to the study, which involves scientists from Columbia University and the University of Michigan (both in the US), the level of antibodies in people who received three or four doses of the vaccine against the original virus in Wuhan (Chinese City where the coronavirus was originally identified) and those vaccinated with omicronadapted bivalents were virtually nil against XBB.1.
Even the socalled cases of vaccine escapes with the omicron variants BA.4 or BA.5 could not prevent reinfection by XBB.1.
The same concerns emerged with monoclonal antibodies, a therapy used to treat severe patients with Covid, which had virtually no effect against the variants.
“The rapid development of new subvariants [de BQ.1 e XBB.1] and the accumulation of mutations they have, particularly in protein S [espícula usada pelo vírus para invadir as células] are similar to what we saw when Omicron first emerged in early 2021, warning of how they could affect the effectiveness of current Covid vaccines and monoclonal therapies,” the study authors wrote.