New mutation — BA.2.75 — has been detected in 10 other countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
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MONDAY, July 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — As the coronavirus continues to evolve, a new highly contagious omicron variant is appearing in India and other nations, including the United States, experts say.<\/p>\n
This new mutation — dubbed BA.2.75 — is concerning scientists because it appears to spread fast, bypassing the protection offered by COVID-19 vaccines and immunity from previous infection, the Associated Press<\/em> reported Monday. But whether it can cause more serious disease than other forms of COVID-19 is not clear, the experts said.<\/p>\n “It’s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,” Matthew Binnicker, Ph.D., director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told the AP<\/em>. “But it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase.”<\/p>\n Shishi Luo, Ph.D., is head of infectious diseases for the company Helix, which supplies viral sequencing information to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Luo told the AP<\/em> that seeing this new variant popping up around the world “is an early indication it is spreading.”<\/p>\n In addition to India and three recent cases in the United States, BA.2.75 has been detected in 10 other countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada.<\/p>\n Experts worry that this variant can more easily bind to cells and evade the body’s protective antibodies. But vaccines and boosters are still the best defense against severe COVID-19, the news report noted. Reformulated vaccines that target more recent omicron variants should be available in the United States this fall.<\/p>\n