Santé Publique France told AFP on Thursday August 31 that a first case of the Covid-19 variant BA.2.86 had been detected in mainland France in the Grand Est region, confirming information from the daily Le Parisien.
The national health authority also stated that this was the case “An investigation has been initiated to collect epidemiological information and document this first case.”
A variant with many mutations
BA.2.86 is an Omicron variant that has a large number of mutations. On August 21, 2023, Étienne Simon-Lorière, head of the national reference center for respiratory infection viruses (including influenza and Covid-19) and expert in evolutionary genomics of RNA viruses at the Institut Pasteur, explained in our columns that if the variant It was introduced into the The World Health Organization’s list of variants to monitor has been added ” without doubt “ because of “the strong divergence with the dominant variants (about thirty mutations of the spike gene, editor’s note). The BA.2.86 lineage has a large number of changes compared to BA.2, which appears to be its closest ancestor. »
Last week, the President of the Health Risk Monitoring and Anticipation Committee (Covars), Brigitte Autran, also confirmed that a “larger number of mutations”, I did the variant “likely to develop more strongly and spread more easily”.
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Already discovered in other countries
AFP states that the variant has already been detected in several countries such as the USA, Denmark or Israel, but not yet in France.
Experts do not expect whether this new variant, called “Pirola” on social networks, will lead to an increase in infections “to see levels of severe illness and death comparable to those seen earlier in the pandemic when the Alpha, Delta or Omicron variants were spreading.” François Balloux, Chair of Bioinformatics at University College London, recently commented on this.
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