{"id":4647,"date":"2023-09-19T12:40:06","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T17:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4647"},"modified":"2023-09-19T12:40:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T17:40:10","slug":"new-covid-variant-ba-2-86-spotted-in-10-states-though-highly-mutated-strain-remains-rare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/09\/19\/new-covid-variant-ba-2-86-spotted-in-10-states-though-highly-mutated-strain-remains-rare\/","title":{"rendered":"New COVID variant BA.2.86 spotted in 10 states, though highly mutated strain remains rare"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/new-covid-variant-ba-2-86-more-states\/\">CBS News<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People across at least 10 states have now been infected by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/new-covid-variant-ba286-who-monitoring\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">BA.2.86, a highly mutated variant<\/a>&nbsp;of the virus that causes COVID-19 that authorities have been closely tracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/cov-spectrum.org\/explore\/United%20States\/AllSamples\/Past6M\/variants?nextcladePangoLineage=BA.2.86*&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">data tallied<\/a>&nbsp;from the global virus database GISAID, labs have reported finding BA.2.86 in samples from Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Estimates suggest BA.2.86 still remains a small fraction of new COVID-19 cases nationwide.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Too few sequences of the virus have been reported to show up on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&#8217;s biweekly variant&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#variant-proportions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">estimates<\/a>, which still show that a long list of closely related XBB variant descendants are driving virtually all infections around the country.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The diversity is less than what appears. Many of these lineages actually have identical spike sequences. We&#8217;ve observed this before, where we see convergent evolution and viruses evolving to have the same substitutions,&#8221; said Natalie Thornburg, a laboratory branch chief in the CDC&#8217;s Coronaviruses and Other Respiratory Viruses Division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/new-covid-variant-ba-2-86-more-states\/\">continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"kbb ks  S jCxmpX P VLp V  lNuHVD\">kbb ks  S jCxmpX P VLp V  lNuHVD<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CBS News People across at least 10 states have now been infected by&nbsp;BA.2.86, a highly mutated variant&nbsp;of the virus that causes COVID-19 that authorities have been closely tracking. According to&nbsp;data tallied&nbsp;from the global virus database GISAID, labs have reported finding BA.2.86 in samples from Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4648,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647\/revisions\/4648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}