Pirola Variant (BA.2.86): Eine aufkommende Sorge inmitten von COVID-19 (Nachrichten)

Four years ago, on November 30, 2019, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was detected in a man in Wuhan, China. It would still be over a month before the SARS-CoV-2 virus was fully identified, but it would go on to kill no less than 7 million people globally and forever alter life on this planet.

As we have changed, so has the virus. It’s natural for pathogens to evolve workarounds to our immunity and, a few months ago, scientists detected a variant of SARS-CoV-2 that seemed alarmingly capable of infecting mass amounts of people, breaking through the immunity acquired from previous infections and vaccines.

The variant is named BA.2.86, nicknamed by some experts as “Pirola,” because a string of letters and numbers can be confusing to the general public. When Pirola first hit the radar of virus hunters, it was only responsible for a handful of cases. It was not really responsible for the wave of COVID infections that surged at the end of summer. But now that seems to be changing and Pirola is making a bigger impact as the pandemic heads into its fourth winter.

Quelle: Salon.com