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Good and Bad News About the Omicron Subvariants
Vidcast: https://youtu.be/OsPEBimYMVs
The good news: studies from South Africa show that the Omicron subvariant BA.2 that I call Omicron 2, while appearing to spread faster than Omicron 1, does not cause more severe disease. The bad news: researchers in Denmark have identified a subtype of Omicron 2, so-called BA.2+H78Y, that is even better than Omicron 1 or 2 at evading preexisting CoVid immunity from either vaccination or natural infection and threatens to become the dominant Omicron form.
The South African group utilized their national clinical databases and laboratory test data that pinpoint the Omicron subtype of each infection to compare the risks of hospitalization and the most severe disease in hospitalized patients for those persons infected with Omicron2 versus Omicron1. Studying a total of 680,555 CoVid positive persons during the months of December 2021 through January 2022, the risk of hospitalization was not statistically different for those infected with Omicron2 versus Omicron1. The same was true for those hospitalized persons who progressed to having the most severe CoVid Omicron infections.
Not all studies agree that Omicron2 has similar toxicity to Omicron1 as a recent one from Japan shows the opposite.
Turning to the newest Omicron viral subtype, the BA.2+H78Y, its defining mutation on the ORF3A spike protein is believed to promote better immune evasion from existing anti-CoVid antibodies but also more intense cell destruction than Omicron1 when it enters a cell. The fact that this new subtype is spreading faster than Omicron1 or the original Omicron2 is proof that its immune evasion is superior.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.17.22271030v1.full.pdf
https://twitter.com/COVIDnewsfast/status/1495248561209962496
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405580821000273
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1.full.pdf
#CoVid #omicron #subvariant #subtype #BA2 #BA1
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By Howard G. Smith MD, AM
Vidcast: https://youtu.be/OsPEBimYMVs
The good news: studies from South Africa show that the Omicron subvariant BA.2 that I call Omicron 2, while appearing to spread faster than Omicron 1, does not cause more severe disease. The bad news: researchers in Denmark have identified a subtype of Omicron 2, so-called BA.2+H78Y, that is even better than Omicron 1 or 2 at evading preexisting CoVid immunity from either vaccination or natural infection and threatens to become the dominant Omicron form.
The South African group utilized their national clinical databases and laboratory test data that pinpoint the Omicron subtype of each infection to compare the risks of hospitalization and the most severe disease in hospitalized patients for those persons infected with Omicron2 versus Omicron1. Studying a total of 680,555 CoVid positive persons during the months of December 2021 through January 2022, the risk of hospitalization was not statistically different for those infected with Omicron2 versus Omicron1. The same was true for those hospitalized persons who progressed to having the most severe CoVid Omicron infections.
Not all studies agree that Omicron2 has similar toxicity to Omicron1 as a recent one from Japan shows the opposite.
Turning to the newest Omicron viral subtype, the BA.2+H78Y, its defining mutation on the ORF3A spike protein is believed to promote better immune evasion from existing anti-CoVid antibodies but also more intense cell destruction than Omicron1 when it enters a cell. The fact that this new subtype is spreading faster than Omicron1 or the original Omicron2 is proof that its immune evasion is superior.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.17.22271030v1.full.pdf
https://twitter.com/COVIDnewsfast/status/1495248561209962496
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405580821000273
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1.full.pdf
#CoVid #omicron #subvariant #subtype #BA2 #BA1