This is “frustrating” says Robertson, as “the UK’s ability to detect new variants has been compromised by the effective ending of the Office for National Statistics Coronavirus Infection Survey. Planning is all the more challenging given that the UK’s surveillance and testing regimen is now the thinnest since the pandemic began. With Covid becoming “more of a value-for-money exercise” for the government, according to Duncan Robertson, senior lecturer in management sciences at Loughborough Business School, they may be playing a risky game by reducing eligibility for “financial savings”. The consensus is that it is too early to tell how useful the vaccine may prove, though some MPs are pushing for 50- to 64-year-olds to be immunised, either as part of the rollout or privately. However Griffin says “multiple preprint studies posted by reputable labs show this to be equally, or perhaps more, antibody evasive compared to the XBBs” – which “are among the most antibody-evasive strains ever encountered”. Both Pfizer and Moderna last week said their jabs offered “strong responses” to the spike protein (which they target). Still, concerns remain about the efficacy of the jab for Pirola, with studies so far producing mixed results. The government started its Covid vaccine rollout last week for over-65s and immunocompromised people, earlier than planned, as a “precautionary measure” in response to the World Health Organization declaring Pirola a “variant of interest”. Lessons learned during the early part of the pandemic, and before, do seem to have been forgotten With more than 30 mutations, Pirola is “very unique”, adds Pekosz, with the potential to be “more concerning” than the other circulating variants. “They accumulate a few mutations that allow them to evade some of the antibodies induced by prior infection or vaccination, they spread for a few months, then they are supplanted by a variant that has picked up a few different mutations that also function to evade pre-existing immunity, and the cycle continues.” This follows a pattern seen with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic, explains Andrew Pekosz, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University. While the EG.5.1 (Eris) and XBB variants account for most Covid infections globally (and most of the more than 1m symptomatic Covid cases currently in Britain), Pirola, which descended from Omicron, is heavily mutated. Pirola began raising red flags when first detected in Israel in July, with cases confirmed now in more than a dozen countries, including Denmark and the US. “The NHS is buckling from continued underfunding and staff shortages.” With temperatures falling (colder climes help the virus to thrive), schools and universities returning to large-scale indoor mixing – and at the outset of flu season – the overall rise in infections is already “translating to hospitalisations and deaths, increased NHS pressure, as well as more than a million suffering from long-term health problems under the umbrella term long Covid”, says Stephen Griffin, professor of cancer virology at the University of Leeds and a member of Independent Sage. That Omicron outbreak resulted in almost half of all Britons getting infected with Covid last year, and we may be facing a repeat performance at what scientists say is the worst possible time. The worry is over what is “the most striking Sars-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron”, according to Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology and director of the University College London Genetics Institute. More than two years since the UK’s last lockdown, concerns over BA.2.86 – known to have infected dozens of people in the UK as of last weekend, including 28 at a Norfolk care home – have been rising. “New variant”, “care home outbreak”, “cases rising”: you’d be forgiven if the headlines around Pirola, or BA.2.86, the latest Covid strain to arrive in the UK, had triggered a severe case of pandemic deja vu.
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