A highly mutated form of the coronavirus that threatens to be the most adept yet at slipping past the body’s immune defenses is capturing the attention of virologists and health officials.
While only about a dozen cases of the new BA.2.86 variant have been reported worldwide — including three in the United States — experts say this variant requires intense monitoring and vigilance that many of its predecessors did not. That’s because it has even greater potential to escape the antibodies that protect people from getting sick, even if you’ve recently been infected or vaccinated.
Image description: Electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. Photo by: NIAID. Image is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 DEED | Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
