A new super contagious omicron variant has been detected in the US. Dubbed “Centaurus,” it is remarkably infective.
The BA.2.75 variant – nicknamed “Centaurus” – was first detected in India in early May. Cases in the UK have since risen steeply, reports The Guardian, causing authorities to redouble their efforts to get the nearly 3 million adults in England who have not yet received a single dose of Covid vaccine, vaccinated.
BA.2.75 has also since been detected in about 10 other countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Germany, and Canada.
“It’s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions” but “it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase,” Matthew Binnicker, the Mayo Clinic’s director of clinical virology, tells the Associated Press.
In India, BA.2.75 is quickly overtaking BA.4 and BA.5, which are said to be as transmissible as measles and together make up more than 70 percent of COVID cases in the US, according to WTOP.
The “Centaurus” variant, BA.2.75, is believed to have evolved from BA.2, as did the BA.4 and BA.5 variants. However, it has a large number of mutations differentiating it from earlier omicron variants, including in the spike protein, according to Forbes.
A large number of mutations could make it more efficient at binding to cells and evading antibodies from past infection or a vaccine, though more research is needed.
“It is definitely a potential candidate for what comes after BA.5,” Dr. Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, tells The Guardian.
It is still too early to tell if the BA2.75 variant will cause more severe disease than other Omicron variants, but the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics has found that infected people either show mild symptoms or are asymptomatic, reports the Independent.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control designated BA.2.75 a “variant under monitoring” on Thursday. The World Health Organization (WHO) is also monitoring the variant.
