"More Prepared Than Ever For Coronavirus Mutations": Scientists
NDTV
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization designated BA.2.86 a "variant under monitoring" on Thursday, a designation that encourages countries to track and report the sequences they find".
A new variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 has put countries on alert as scientists scramble to understand the contagiousness and immunity to defend against it, CNN reported on Sunday.
CNN reported that the new variant, called BA.2.86 and nicknamed Pirola by variant hunters on social media, has more than 30 amino acid changes to its spike protein compared with its next closest ancestor, the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, according to Dr Jesse Bloom, who studies viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.
"This makes it an evolutionary jump comparable in size to that which originally gave rise to Omicron," Bloom posted on his lab's website.
