A South African laboratory study that used COVID-19 samples from an immunocompromised person for six months showed that the virus evolved into more pathogen, indicating that a new variant could cause more illness than the existing main strain of omicron.
The study, conducted through the same lab that first scheduled testing of the anti-vaccine strain of the omicron strain last year, used samples from an HIV-infected person.
Over the course of six months, the virus first caused the same moving melting point and death as the omicron BA. 1 strain, but as it evolved, those grades increased to similar to the first known edition of Covid-19 in Wuhan. Porcelain.
The study, led by Alex Sigal of the Africa Health Research Institute in the South African city of Durban, says the Covid-19 pathogen may continue to mutate and a new variant may cause more severe illness and death than the benign omicron strain.
The study has not yet been peer-reviewed and is only about lab work on samples from an individual.
Sigal and other scientists have postulated in the past that variants such as beta and omicron, first known in southern Africa, could have evolved in other immunocompromised people, such as those with HIV.
The time it takes for those other people to get rid of the disease allows them to mutate and evade antibodies more, they said.
The study “could imply that the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 into a long-term infection will necessarily lead to attenuation,” the researchers said in their findings, which were published Nov. 24.
“This could imply that a long-term variant could be more pathogenic than the Omicron strains circulating lately. “
African Health Research Institute Alex Sigal COVID-19 coronavirus Covid-19 variant Omicron
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