This article describes the new covid variants likely to dominate over the winter. It is not good news.
Quote:Despite some confusing remarks from President Joseph Biden, the pandemic appears far from over. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has essentially been given free reign the last several months, allowing it to mutate and evolve new ways around immunity and vaccinations.
Quote:"The degree of immune escape and evasion is amazing right now, crazy," Yunlong Richard Cao, an immunologist at Peking University in Beijing, told Nature this week. Cao co-authored a paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, that seems to show previous infections by BA.5 and antibody drugs, including Evusheld and Bebtelovimab, aren't enough to stop a BQ.1 infection.
"Such rapid and simultaneous emergence of multiple variants with enormous growth advantages is unprecedented," Cao and his colleagues warned in the study.
Quote:And then there's XBB, which Cao has described as "the most antibody-evasive strain tested." It combines two different omicron lineages (BJ.1 and BM.1.1.1) to make something so good at evading immunity (either from previous infections or vaccines) that it's close to SARS-CoV-1. It "could cause significant immune escape at a scale never seen before," Cao and his colleagues wrote.
Quote:Not only are variants changing, so are the symptoms. Recent reports from the U.K. suggest that a sore throat is now the dominant symptom of COVID infection, rather than fever or loss of smell.
"Fever and loss of smell are really rare now — so many old people may not think they've got COVID," Professor Tim Spector, co-founder of the Covid ZOE app, told The Independent. "They'd say it's a cold and not be tested."
