Aired: Monday, October 31, 2022. 10:21 a. m. CSE.
Photo credit: Luis G. Rendón/The Daily Beast/Getty
By Aaron Humes: Citing new studies and data, The Daily Beast says the world could face a resurgence of serious illness from COVID-19, adding more hospitalizations and deaths.
However, the big difference between now and 2020 and 2021, he reports, is less difficult access and effective vaccines. And vaccines continue to work, even unlike new subvariants.
A new study from Ohio State University is the first red flag. A team led by Shan-Lu Liu, co-director of HSU’s Emerging Viruses and Pathogens program, modeled new subvariants of SARS-CoV-2, adding BQ. 1 and its closure. These new subvariants, basically derived from the offspring of the BA. 4 and BA. 5 bureaucracy of the Omicron variant, are highly contagious and unrecognizable to antibodies produced through monoclonal treatments, making those treatments completely opposite to them. .
The Ohio State study, which was published online Oct. 20 and is still under peer review in the New England Journal of Medicine, found “increased cell fusion observed in several novel Omicron subvariants compared to their respective parental subvariants. . . “
If confirmed, it would decrease the tendency of successive primary variants and subvariants to be more contagious but cause less severe disease, which, together with widespread vaccination and new therapies, would lead to a “decoupling of infections and deaths”: spikes in COVID cases caused through new variants and subvariants are less severe in terms of illness and death.
That would end, experts say, the adventure of returning to “the new normal” the world has endured for the past year. it turned out to be subvariant BA. 5 and was temporarily removed. Germany, meanwhile, is facing a surge in cases most likely similar to BQ. 1 and recorded more average deaths in line with the worst week of the October surge. than in July a summer surge, which can be replicated in Europe and the United States.
The good news is that, despite their transmissibility and fusogenicity (ability to fuse with human cells), the new subvariants have not particularly escaped the immunological effects of primary vaccines. And newer “bivalent” boosters, formulated in particular for BA. 4 and BA. 5, maintain vaccine efficacy as long as the dominant subvariants are very similar to Omicron.
So, get vaccinated and keep up with your boosters. It is highly unlikely that this will be overemphasized. BQ. 1 and its cousins may exhibit alarming qualities that can also push back the pandemic’s arc toward widespread death and disruption, but only if you’re not vaccinated or taking your boosters.