More transmissible and of even virulence? This “little brother” of Omicron, quickly became majority in Denmark, sows the trouble. The sequence of his genome has just been deciphered.
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“The evolution of a living species never stops, except in case of eradication,” recalled Florence debar, specialist in evolutionary biology at the CNRS, in [Nute] of January 11th. This lesson in biology, a certain virus has removable it for two years, at the risk of tiring. How far will we have to decline the Greek alphabet to qualify the variants of SARS-COV-2 that keep emerging? How far to complete this litany by Latin acronyms to designate the “little brothers” of these variants?
It’s a “little brother” of Omicron who sows today the trouble. Named Ba.2, he is the cadet of the majority strain of this variant, called “BA.1”, which has circulates very actively in Europe for one to two months. If Ba.2 worries, it is because of two observations. In Denmark, he quickly supplanted his eldest: there is now 66% of SAR-COV-2 strains.
Denmark has often been compared to the United Kingdom, two countries where the Omicron wave has broken in early December 2021. In both countries, this wave first followed parallel curves. But on January 5th, a dropout has occurred. In Denmark, she continued her vertiginous climb, while in the UK, she flattened before going down quickly. Notable, since January 17, this decline marks the step. In the United Kingdom, sub-variant BA.2 remains very minority (in the order of 3%), but it would have, for a few days, started to nibble the share of its elder. Hence this legitimate question: the accelerated dissemination of BA.2 in Denmark, where new flameless contaminations, would it be a sign of its increased transmissibility?
very present in Denmark
In France, a similar question was born. Why the peak of the Omicron wave, the arrival of which was announced in mid-January, “he says so much? If the wave resumes new vigor, can its acceleration be linked, at least partly, at the arrival of BA.2? Impossible at this stage to answer.
On the one hand, our variant detection systems are not suitable for follow-up of this sub-variant. “The detection of SARS-COV-2 mutations by screening does not allow, in most laboratories, to distinguish Ba.1 of Ba.2”, explains Florence debar. To make this distinguo, the screening targets will need to be changed. The other method is to sequence the entire viral genome. However, “the rise of sequencing data in France is not immediate,” adds the biologist. Therefore, it can not be known at which level this sub-variant circulates in France. To date, less than twenty cases have been certified by sequencing throughout the territory. A number probably underestimated.
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