Omicron 4 and 5, WHO monitors: “Possible risk of immune escape”

New ‘sisters’ of the Omicron variant come under the lens of the World Health Organization. “A small number of BA.4 and BA.5 sequences have been detected in some countries”, explains WHO in the latest weekly bulletin on the trend of Covid-19 in the world. Both, both Omicron 4 and Omicron 5, “have additional mutations (S: L452R and S: F486V) in the Spike region” of Sars-CoV-2, the one the virus uses to lock target cells, as well as “mutations unique to the outside of Spike. ” And “the mutations S: L452R and S: F486V – the report reads – are associated with potential characteristics of immune escape”. Furthermore, the WHO points out, “the majority of BA.4 and BA.5 sequences have” the so-called “deletion 69-70”, which is “largely not present in BA.2 sequences” and therefore “may prove useful. for oversight purposes in a context where BA.2 is dominant “. Omicron 2, in fact, now represents “99.2% of the sequences loaded on the Gisaid platform in the last 30 days”. The Geneva agency “is working with scientists to further evaluate the characteristics” of these sub-variants “and their public health implications.” WHO again recommends countries to “continue surveillance”, with “rapid sharing of data on available public databases”.