BA.2 -variantti on japanilaistutkimuksen mukaan perusomikronia vakavampi terveysuhka

Omicron BA.2 is a major health threat as it’s more fusogenic, pathogenic and causes severe outcomes!
Study: Evidence of major differences between Omicron BA.2 and BA.1:
BA.2 has
1. Higher R 1.4X (growing around the world)
2. More vaccine evading
3. Resistant to BA.1 induced immunity.
4. Higher severity (pathogenicity): More rapid and more extensive lung damage in hamsters
https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1494336422421032964
Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 BA.2 variant
Soon after the emergence and global spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron lineage, BA.1 (ref1, 2), another Omicron lineage, BA.2, has initiated outcompeting BA.1. Statistical analysis shows that the effective reproduction number of BA.2 is 1.4-fold higher than that of BA.1. Neutralisation experiments show that the vaccine-induced humoral immunity fails to function against BA.2 like BA.1, and notably, the antigenicity of BA.2 is different from BA.1. Cell culture experiments show that BA.2 is more replicative in human nasal epithelial cells and more fusogenic than BA.1. Furthermore, infection experiments using hamsters show that BA.2 is more pathogenic than BA.1. Our multiscale investigations suggest that the risk of BA.2 for global health is potentially higher than that of BA.1. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1