COVID-19 News: SARS-CoV-2 Presents Its 2023 Variant And Sub-lineages Collections: XBB.1.5, BF.5.1, BF.5.2, BA.5.2.46, BF.7 with C1243F, CJ.1,CH.1.1.1
COVID-19 News - 2023 SARS-CoV-2 Variants and Sublineages Jan 01, 2023 1 year, 3 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 35 minutes ago
COVID-19 News: Inspired by the morons in mid-September of 2022 that said that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron lineages accelerated their phase of convergent evolution and started spawning sub-lineages with carefully chosen mutations that not only enhanced its transmissibility and infectivity but also increased its immune evasiveness.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123767437/joe-biden-covid-19-pandemic-over
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-chief-says-end-sight-covid-19-pandemic-2022-09-14/
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.05.518843v1
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2022.748948/full
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.biochem.2c00132
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05644-7
The SARS-CoV-2 virus for its 2023 variant and sub-lineages collections, was also ‘motivated’ by fallacies being propagated by charlatans and ignorant politicians like the “The New Omicron sub-lineages are Mild” or that “The COVID-19 Shots and boosters will prevent disease severity and deaths” or worse “We have to learn to live with the virus!”
https://ufcw5.org/2021/02/stop-panicking-about-the-covid-19-variants-says-ucsfs-monica-gandhi/
https://www.nytimes.com/article/covid-variants-nightmare.html
https://www.unicef.org/niger/stories/we-need-learn-how-live-covid-19
Hence the ignorant masses in many countries brainwashed by
COVID-19 News coverages on the topics above, are under the illusion that its ok to let their guards down and do away with COVID-19 preventive measures including social distancing, masking etc unaware of what the dangers and havoc the virus can do to their long term health!
Also, while many researchers are only interested in the mutations found in the spike, nucleocapsid, envelope or other accessory proteins, to see how the virus is changing, very little focus or studies were done on its conformational structures and folding strategies, hence the new collections are also taking more strides in these areas as it adapts itself
to withstand extreme environmental conditions outside of the host so that it can remain infectious for a longer period of time and also further enhance its airborne capabilities over longer distances and time!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35164561/
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.02030-21
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-italian-and-american-study-claims-that-sars-cov-2-has-evolved-to-withstand-higher-temperatures
To digress a bit, it should be noted and further validation studies needed, that in the last 3 months, many of the new emerging variants have conformational changes including to their folding patterns that enables to withstand extreme pH, humidity, temperature changes and even air and wind kinetics. Hence the virus is has greatly adapted to remain for longer periods in the air, in water and on surfaces etc. We at Thailand Medical News hypothesize that in China for example, the new variants and sub-lineages have caused the country to be in super “hyperendemic state”, where the virus is literally and constantly in the environment and surroundings and no one is going to be able to escape getting infected and also reinfected. Certain observational data is already indicating this to be true!
The new SARS-CoV-2 2023 variants and sub-lineages collections are more immune evasive to the point that there are no known monoclonal therapeutics that can work against them and future studies will show that no previous infections will provide any protection against getting infected by them! Reinfections and coinfections will be the new norm for 2023!
They are also more adapt for viral persistence without raising much immune responses from the host until they cause sufficient damage to various cellular pathways, gene regulation and cells, tissues and organs. Hence in a way, the virus is also learning to live with us…only for a bit longer though!
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-news-finally,-u-s-nih-warns-sars-cov-2-viral-persistence-is-a-serious-issue-that-is-also-affecting-long-covid
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/2023-to-start-with-more-740-new-sars-cov-2-sub-lineages-and-recombinant-variants-in-circulation,-most-will-not-kill-immediately-but-rather-slowly
It should be noted that as most of the new 2023 variants and sub-lineages collections are derivatives from the BA.5 variants and BA.2 variants, it is concerning that emerging studies are showing that the BA.5 variant and its sub-lineages are more neurovirulent.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-news-university-of-queensland-study-shockingly-finds-that-ba-5-sub-lineages-are-more-neurovirulent-that-earlier-omicron-variants
Hence, we can expect to see these new variants causing more Post COVID issues and pending further studies for validation, we also believe that these new variants and sub-lineages exhibit enhanced tropism for the heart and gastrointestinal tract, liver and kidneys!
The new SARS-CoV-2 2023 variant and sub-line collections are believed to be more pathogenic and is likely to cause more disease severity and also more long-term effects. Already we are witnessing increasing hospitalizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Japan where these new variant debuts are gradually becoming predominant in circulation and displacing the BQ variants and sub-lineages and also the original XBB and BA.5 variants and sub-lineages.
Most of the new 2023 collections will also tend to possess the F486, K444, A484, S494 and L452R mutations while there will also be more mutations in the ORF7, OFR8 and ORF9 proteins that are involved with disarming the human host immune responses.
The new 2023 variant and sub-lineages collections that are expected to be predominant in circulation for the next few weeks till the Chinese New Year collections debut includes the following:
-
BF.7 with spike mutations C1243F mutation.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/covid-19-news-multiple-new-variants-in-china-could-be-behind-increasing-disease-severity-including-new-bf-7-variant-with-c1243f-spike-mutation
-
XBB.1.5
https://cov-spectrum.org/explore/World/AllSamples/Past6M/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=XBB.1.5
The XBB.1.5 is currently displacing the BQ variants in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe to become the predominant sub-lineages.
https://twitter.com/RajlabN/status/1608877190632071168
-
BF.5.1
https://cov-spectrum.org/explore/World/AllSamples/Past6M/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=BF.5.1
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-news-is-the-new-bf-5-variant-with-orf1a-i2873v-mutation-driving-covid-19-deaths-in-japan-urgent-research-warranted
-
BF.5.2
https://cov-spectrum.org/explore/World/AllSamples/Past6M/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=BF.5.2
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-news-is-the-new-bf-5-variant-with-orf1a-i2873v-mutation-driving-covid-19-deaths-in-japan-urgent-research-warranted
-
BA.5.2.46
https://cov-spectrum.org/explore/World/AllSamples/Past6M/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=BA.5.2.46
-
BA.2.3.20 with ORF8 T121 mutation.
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1481
-
CJ.1
https://cov-spectrum.org/explore/World/AllSamples/Past6M/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=CJ.1
-CH.1.1.1
https://cov-spectrum.org/explore/World/AllSamples/Past6M/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=CH.1.1.1
-
CK.1 with spike mutations S:460K+S:444N and Orf1a:S2797F mutation.
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1467
It should be noted that most of these new variants and sub-lineages are still mutating at an increasing phase and are spawning more sub-lineages.
The BA.5.2 variant is spawning a number of worrisome sub-lineages especially in China.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/covid-19-news-besides-bf-7-with-c1243f-mutation,-other-new-concerning-sublineages-from-ba-2-3-20-and-ba-5-2-with-new-mutations-identified-in-china
And the XBB.1.5 is also spawning its own sub-lineages as discovered in the last 12 hours and also recombining in some cases with existing variants like the BQ.1.14 variant.
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1505
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1503
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1491
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/1490
With more reinfections and coinfections taking place, we can expect more evolution and sub-lineages emerging and despite fallacies that these new variants and sub-lineages are more supposedly more mild except for those in the vulnerable groups, we believe that all of them have enhanced pathogenesis and will drive deaths despite initial asymptomatic or mild symptomatic infections!
We can expect the excess deaths rates in 2023 to increase exponentially.
We wish all a Happy 2023!
For the latest
COVID-19 News, keep on logging to Thailand Medical News.
Share
Tweet
Share
