The latest strain of Covid has UK and US scientists concerned that it may be spreading quicker than researchers can handle.
BA.2.86, known unofficially as Pirola, was first spotted in Denmark last July, but in the weeks that came after it it was found around the world and experts were struggling to follow the trail.
The seemingly unconnected cases sparked fears among the scientific community that the virus may be far more widespread than first realised.
Pirola takes its name from the Greek alphabet, much like the Alpha and Omicron strains before it. The latest strain is named using Pi and Rho, hence Pirola.
Brits can, for now, breathe a sigh of relief, as to date Pirola has not been classified as a “variant of concern”. It’s a strain of Omicron, which itself was a mild variant for many.
However, one expert has warned that if Brits don’t get boosted there is a higher liklihood of a future lockdown.
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According to the Independent, Yale’s infectious diseases specialist, Dr Scott Roberts said: “When Omicron hit in the winter of 2021, there was a huge rise in COVID-19 cases because it was so different from the Delta variant, and it evaded immunity from both natural infection and vaccination.
“The other concern is that this strain has been picked up in at least six countries, and the cases are unrelated. This suggests some degree of transmission in the [international] community that we’re not detecting.”
Despite being branded by Professor Francois Balloux at London’s UCL as “the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron”, he believes it is unlikely to cause a new wave of significant disease.
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The high number of mutations found in Pirola makes it particularly transmissible as mutations enable strains to bypass people’s immune systems with greater ease.
The strain was first recorded in Denmark in July, but has since cropped up in Sweden, South Africa, Israel and Croatia.
On August 18 it was spotted in the UK. Since that initial sighting 37 cases of the strain have been identified in Britain.
Of that 37, 28 cases were linked to an outbreak in a Norfolk care home. Seven in total have been admitted to hospital but Pirola has claimed no lives in the UK as of yet.
ITV reported Dr Renu Bindra, UKHSA incident director, as saying that while Pirola has a “significant number of mutations” compared with other Covid variants in the population, the data so far is “too limited to draw firm conclusions” about the strain’s severity.
The high number of mutations found in Pirola makes it particularly transmissible as mutations enable strains to bypass people’s immune systems with greater ease.
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