Key Points
A highly mutated COVID variant called BA.2.86 has now been detected in Switzerland and South Africa in addition to Israel, Denmark, the U.S. and the U.K., according to a leading World Health Organization official...
It was first spotted in Denmark on July 24 after the virus infecting a patient at risk of becoming severely ill was sequenced..
That the known cases are not linked suggests it is already circulating more widely, particularly given reduced surveillance worldwide, she said.. Scientists are testing how well updated COVID-19 vaccines will work against BA.2.86..
How much surveillance is needed to track the virus remains an open question, health experts said, and the countries that have detected the new variant all have strong genomic sequencing capacity..
Data from hospital admissions, emergency room visits, deaths, wastewater sampling and sequencing, including at airports, has helped fill in the global picture, he said.. Jha and others, including the European public health agency and COVAX, the global program for getting vaccines to the world's poorest, said COVID surveillance and defenses could be reactivated in the event of a major infection wave...
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