On Thursday, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that it was following a new lineage of the virus, BA.2.86, that causes COVID-19.
The CDC said in X (formerly Twitter) that the lineage is named BA.2.86, and has been caught in Denmark, the United States, and Israel.
The agency added that as we know more about BA.2.86, CDC’s suggestion for saving yourself from COVID-19 remains the same.
Earlier on Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a platform X that it had classified BA.2.86 as a variant under watching due to the big number of modifications it holds.
It added that only a few series of the variant have been reported from some countries.
Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center said in a slide deck published that an earlier study suggests that the new variant will have a similar or greater escape than XXB.1.5 from antibodies evoked by pre-Omicron and first-generation Omicron variants.
