News/Commentary

WHO gets push back for ‘scaremongering’ over new COVID variant with a ‘large number of mutations’

August 18, 2023 | | Print Article

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday that it has officially designated a new COVID variant as a “variant under monitoring,” sparking among some fears of yet another wave of illnesses, measures, and potential closures.

The variant BA.2.86 was placed on the monitoring list “due to the large number of mutations it carries,” WHO stated in a post on X.

“So far, only a few sequences of the variant have been reported from a handful of countries,” the organization added.

According to Reuters, the “new lineage” has “36 mutations from the currently-dominant XBB.1.5 COVID variant.”

Dr. S. Wesley Long, medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist, said BA.2.86 “harkens back to an earlier branch” of the virus.

It is still unclear whether the variant — which, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has been detected in the United States, Denmark, and Israel — will out-compete other COVID strains or better escape immune responses from either prior infection or from receiving the vaccine, Dr. Long added.

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However, according to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center virologist Jesse Bloom, early analysis of BA.2.86 indicates it “will have equal or greater escape than XBB.1.5 from antibodies elicited by pre-Omicron and first-generation Omicron variants.”

“The Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is the strain targeted by vaccines in upcoming COVID booster shots,” Reuters reports. “Bloom’s slides note that the most likely scenario is that BA.2.86 is less transmissible than current dominant variants, so never spreads widely, but more sequencing data is needed.”

But Dr. Long said he fears a “spike in cases.”

“My biggest concern would be that it could cause a bigger spike in cases than what we have seen in recent waves,” he stated, adding, “The boosters will still help you fight off COVID in general.”

“CDC is gathering more information and will share more about this lineage as we learn it,” the CDC wrote on X. “As we learn more about BA.2.86, CDC’s advice on protecting yourself from COVID-19 remains the same.”

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On X, many are rolling their virtual eyes at the announcement of yet another COVID variant.


Response to the CDC wasn’t much better.

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“Political propaganda,” stated one user, to which another replied, “Louder for the peeps in the outfield.”

Meanwhile, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Dr. Scott Gottlieb appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday to discuss the fast-spreading EG.5 variant — also known as the “Eris” variant.

“There’s nothing to suggest that this particular strain [EG.5] circulating in the United States right now is more pathogenic than prior variants,” Gottlieb said. “So, people who are vaccinated with prior variants and who have had the infection before, should have some residual immunity against this.”

EG.5, he said, “is an Omicron subvariant that doesn’t appear to be that much different in terms of its pathogenicity than the prior Omicron variants.”

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(Video: YouTube)

Melissa Fine
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