When new COVID variant BA.2.86 emerged in late July, scientists had concerns about its ability to evade immunity. But early lab tests seem to be easing those fears, as well as concerns over the variant's ability to spread widely.
compared to its close ancestor BA.2 and to XBB.1.5, CNN reported. That big leap in evolution is similar to what happened when omicron first emerged.
"My friends, this is not the second coming of omicron. If it were, it is safe to say we would know by now," Dr. Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist who is co-director of Harvard University's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said in a social media post. Among the findings are that there was a twofold drop in the ability of vaccination and recent infection to neutralize BA.2.86, compared to viruses from XBB.1.5, Yunlong Cao from the Biomedical Innovation Center at Peking University, told CNN. But it was also 60% less infectious than XBB.1.5 variants.
Meanwhile, in experiments at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, researchers used blood from human donors collected in late 2022 and from late August to test the impact of antibodies against BA.2.86.reported.
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