A highly mutated variant of the coronavirus, called BA.2.86, was discovered in Switzerland and South Africa after being identified in Israel, Denmark, the United States and the United Kingdom, a senior World Health Organization official said. , reports Reuters.

The Omicron BA.2.86 strain has more than 35 mutations in key parts of the virus compared to XBB.1.5, the dominant variant for most of 2023.

He was first spotted in Denmark on July 24. Since then, it has been found in other symptomatic patients, during routine tests at airports and in sewage samples from several countries.

Reassuring messages from experts

Scientists around the world have said that, despite the important surveillance of the BA.2.86 variant, it is unlikely to cause a devastating wave of severe disease and death, given the immune protection built up worldwide after vaccination and prior infection.

“These numbers are still small,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, in her first interview with BA.2.86.

According to her, the fact that infected people are not related to each other means that this subvariant is already widely circulating.

Scientists are testing how well the updated COVID-19 vaccines will work against BA.2.86, with Kerkhove noting that the vaccines were more effective at preventing severe disease and death than reinfection.

“We are in a completely different phase (of the pandemic) than if it had appeared in the first year,” said Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who advises the WHO.