Ómicron’s BA.5 variant with “growing” trend in Portugal. Everything you need to know
A report by the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge indicates that an emphasis on BA.5, which is a problem in South Africa, has a growing trend in Portugal and already accounts for 4% of cases. Specialists admit that they spread and replace like other more prominent ones, but they speak of a wave of covid-19 coming through the new BA.5, at a time when cases are still higher than BA.2
The cases of companies are starting to be noticed in Portugal and it is expected that, in the coming days, around 15 thousand daily reports of CNN covid-19 will be registered again, according to cases known by CNN Portugal. However, and according to the mathematical models, the arrival of summer should bring down SARS-CoV-2 contagions, unless a new variant emerges that is necessary as expert accounts or that new ones stand out in their ability to maintain the virus with high transmissibility rates. Is this the case for BA.4 and BA.5, two new strains of the Ómicron variant that are putting South Africa on high alert? For now, Portuguese experts doubt, even if the latest report from the Ricardo Jorge National Institute of Health (INSA) on the genetic diversity of the new coronavirus indicates that BA.
Both BA.4, which has no case detected in Portugal, and BA.5 descended from the BA.2 lineage, despite having “several distinctive genetic characteristics”, the document reads. “The BA.5 lineage has a relative frequency, having reached 4% in the highest number of April and 16 weeks nationally (17 to 24)”, indicates the INSA. “Its relative frequency is estimated to be considerably higher than the data in the present report”, which was released this Tuesday, May 3.
At this time, the BA.5 and BA.2+S:L452R lineage “constitute the two main lineages of interest” in Portugal, with BA.2 showing a “decreasing trend in its relative frequency”, estimated to represent, according to the INSA report, 73.8% of samples were positive for covid-19 by May 2nd.
A variant Ómicron, a variant of the World Health Organization, a variety of specialists, which should be empowered the health qualification organization in all lineages, was considered by the Health Qualification Organization in all lines. – as a variant on its own, rather than considering dependency on Ómicron, first detected in November 2021 in South Africa.
The issue, however, is consensual: for Miguel Prudêncio, what is at stake in BA.5 “mutations that do not occur on top of an already existing virus” of a virus variant, so, for the researcher at the Institute of Medicine Molecular João Lobo Antunes, this designation as an underlining “is correct” and is related “to the natural process of evolution of the virus”.
Regarding what happened, Miguel Prudên still does not have time for April to point out the BA.5 severity, which has not yet occurred during week 13 of 2022, that is, between April 28 and 3; but, as far as is known, BA.5 “apparently does not cause more severe disease than the other strains of Ómicron and there is also no reason to believe that vaccines lose their ability to protect against the most severe forms of the disease”, says the researcher to CNN Portugal.
What is known about the disease transformation by BA.5
Miguel Pruêncio says that it is necessary to make the difference between infection and disease clear, since as collected now shows information that, with this analysis, may have a reduction in the capacity of vaccines to protect an infection but do not have the ability to provide protection against serious illness. Hmm study done in south africa precisely shown, these effort solutions manage to prevent the new previous feces, but have a lower capacity to multiply in the blood of those vaccinated against covid-19.
“BA.2 is quite transferable and BA.5 competes at this level with BA.2”, says the researcher. “It doesn’t seem to be much more transmissible, but at least as transmissible as BA.2 to be able to start importing and gain ground”, indicates Miguel Prudêncio. “More important than this transmissibility are the consequences that it can have in terms of disease, and the information we have now is that a disease is not more serious and that, as vaccines, it does not lose its ability to protect against serious forms. panic and we are creating situations of anxiety in people”, emphasizes the specialist.
Bernardo Gomes, Public Health Physician, also believes that BA.5 will eventually import. “The forms of the virus that do not find an adequate response on the part of the body multiply. It happens with lineages BA.4 and BA.5 and what is expected, given what is happening in Africa, is that these will take the place of BA.2. We are having cyclical substitutions of variant strains for others that are more transmissible and with greater immune invasion compared to the previous ones”, pointing out the specialist. “With this new phenomenon, there are events, that more reinfections, that people who have already been infected have already been infected, and most of the acute ones”, adds the doctor.
Even so, Gomes draws attention to “a type of social development that is still very marked in transmission” when the long-term effects of covid-19 and its variants are unknown and potentially dangerous. “We have increasing reports of people with long covid, with other long-term consequences and manifestations of covid-19. Even this situation with an acute one in children, which is still to be determined, may just be more in a scenario of autoimmune situations that have been in the most marked ways”, warns the specialist, who has no doubt that new hepatitis are related to covid-19. because the pandemic “is not a 10,000 meter race, it is a marathon”.
“We are already having a new wave just with BA.2, if the transmissibility index is above 1”, highlights Bernardo Gomes. This Wednesday, INSA was even in the 1st month, which indicates, when on the 22nd of the same month, which indicates a “when on the 22nd of the same month, which indicates, a “growth of the virus” namely in the regions North, Center and Azores.
And if the impact of BA.5 “for now is residual” in Portugal, the Public Health doctor has no doubt that, through or from other countries, “it is with some degree of certainty that we can say that they will become dominant variants ”. Even so, the Portuguese population has a high response rate and a large part has even already had a large response and response with the “successive variants” of covid-19, a “more robust” immune system.
“What is important to me, with the emergence of new variants over time, and which should make us think, which population protection scheme, namely, have to be updated as our defenses”, Bernardo Gomes defends.
New summer vacancy?
Whether BA.5 can bring a new wave of covid-19? For Miguel Prudêncio, it would be “premature” to think about it, especially at a time when the weather is getting warmer and “the perceived viral infections tend to decrease”, pointing out the IMM researcher. “We have a controlled situation and a high level of severity and four months that give a relationship to very important countries, reflecting that a new variant of the virus, four important years ago, has reservations in relation to a virus, which reflect a new variant of the virus , with the last detected in the past – or an underscore can change the scenario until next winter.
Regarding the administration strategy of a new government dose to boost the vaccine, a fourth that could predict the end of the summer in those over 80 years old, Miguel Prudêncio seems to be the step of the step “within the epidemiological situation” that we have now” , adding that it would make sense to have a “coordination effort” so that the taking of the covid-19 vaccine coincides with the flu vaccine. “Imagining that things would derail, to consider this reinforcement earlier, especially in the elderly, over 80 years old”, he highlights. “Advancing a little in this age group can be, and in the other groups be prudent, from the age of 60 with people with flu, doing so with the vaccine of the age group would make sense”, “Advancing a little in this age group can be considered prudent”.
Bernardo Gomes corroborates, also asking for an integration of the flu vaccine with covid-19: “I have no reason to dispute the Ministry’s strategy”, he says, “it is the best possible given what he knows”. There is still a lot to know about SARS-CoV-2 and the same vaccinated people have, in some cases, more severe symptoms of covid-19. normality possible, which I do not censor”, emphasizes the specialist in Public Health.
In the future, Bernardo Gomes hopes, above all, that there may be “an investment in the issue of ventilation” that will improve the quality of the virus: “We are talking about a virus, in non-ventilated spaces, which is transmitted by aerosols”, . On the other hand, the medical term that allows the development of vaccines that can be transmitted by the disease, can also have a definitive term in the mitigation of the vaccine, deadline, disease, with vacancies also for the vaccine term, terminal disease in the virus.