Covid 19: should the highly mutated BA.X variant worry us? The opinion of Dr Gérald Kierzek

in collaboration with

Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director)

A new variant of Covid is placed under surveillance, announces the World Health Organization (WHO) in its latest epidemiological bulletin. The BA.X strain, also known as BA.2.86, was placed on the international body’s watch list on Thursday due to the “large number of mutations it carries”.

The new variant detected in three countries, but not in France

Only three cases linked to this new strain have so far been detected: in Denmark, Israel and the United States. But Maria Van Kerkhove, epidemiologist and head of the Covid response at the WHO, is concerned about the very limited information available on the strain. “A large number of mutations required closer monitoring”, she shares on the X network (ex Twitter). This is why close monitoring and sequencing are essential today to track known variants, detect new variants, and anticipate their consequences.

Denmark, where two cases with no epidemiological link have been detected, is also working to better understand this virus and thus assess the possible threat posed by the new strain.

Also in the United States, the first case of BA.2.86 detected by a laboratory at the University of Michigan, was also sequenced by the clinical microbiology laboratory as part of “basic surveillance”. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American health authorities, have announced that they are closely scrutinizing this newcomer.

An unknown impact at the moment

Nothing says for the moment that this strain would be more virulent or more dangerous than another. But monitoring is a precautionary measure. The international public health agency has decided to classify this new variant “in the category of variants under surveillance because of the very large number (greater than 30) of mutations of the Spike gene that it carries”. (As a reminder, it is this same Spike protein that allows SARS-COV-2 to penetrate host cells.). It thus joins XBB.2.3, XBB.1.9.2, XBB.1.9.1, XBB, CH.1.1 and BA.2.75 – on the WHO watch list in August.

Now is not the time for panic, but rather for knowledge. A concept recalled by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO: “We wouldn’t know if the virus is evolving, in case we didn’t test enough. Testing is essential to see how the virus evolves”, did he declare. Advice on infection prevention remains unchanged.

“The more the virus mutates, the more it becomes fragile”

This little known strain, should it worry us? Not really according to Dr. Gérald Kierzek, medical director of Doctissimo: “This is yet another variant that has no reason to be more dangerous. But you have to understand that the more you try to protect yourself from a virus, the more it will mutate. It is a competition between the virus and its host, the human being. The population having been largely in contact with the coronavirus, it has developed an immunity that the virus seeks to circumvent by mutating“.

A mechanism which, it may be recalled, would rather be in our favour.

Reassuring words that put the real potential risk into context without falling into psychosis. “We have been living with viruses for millennia, especially coronaviruses, and it is illusory to want to eradicate them. It would be a mistake to think so” concludes the doctor.