“The worst coronavirus we’ve seen.” How will the BA.5 mutation change the course of the COVID-19 pandemic?

The Omicron BA.5 mutation is spreading around the world, causing further spikes in infections. Almost half of all new infections occur in Europe. BA.5 is “the worst version of the coronavirus we have seen,” Prof. Eric Topol. And it’s not just that it’s one of the most infectious variants of the coronavirus out there. How might BA.5 affect the future of the pandemic, and when will it finally end?

1. On the one hand, the BA.5 sub-variant is more contagious and cares about immunity better, on the other hand, it does not seem to cause severe symptoms.
2. Eric Topol, cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, called BA.5 “the worst version of the coronavirus we’ve seen”
3. Dr. Aneta Afelt: Let us not delude ourselves that the evolution of the virus will end up with a mutation BA.5. Such thinking would be naïve
4. Kei Sato, Virologist at Tokyo University in Nature: Chances are That Additional Omicron Variants Will Appear
5. How long will this coronavirus pandemic last? Dr. Afelt: I once said that we need three to five years of patience. Today I am more inclined to say that it is closer to this upper limit
6. More information can be found on the TvoiLokony home page

BA.5 “worst version of coronavirus we have seen”

WHO considers all Omicron mutations to be “worrying variants”, recalls “The Guardian”. This means, inter alia, that they show increased portability, virulence or change in the course of clinical disease, and reduced effectiveness of public health efforts (such as vaccination). Currently, however, the eyes of the world are primarily focused on BA.5, the Omicron sub-variant driving the next wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already been going on for the third year.

BA.5 is “the worst version of the coronavirus we’ve seen,” said cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research Eric Topol recently. The point is not only that it is spreading faster than other circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2. It turns out that people who previously suffered from other variants of the coronavirus will not be immune to it after all. The same applies to people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine (remember, however, that vaccines are still very effective in preventing severe disease, long-term complications and death).

According to «The Guardian», infection with BA.5 (or BA.4) is possible already 28 days after infection with other variants (BA.1, BA.2, Delta). – Of course, getting sick also gives you immunity. Research shows, however, that it has a slightly different nature, does not provide long-term protection – reminds Dr. Aneta Afelt, health geographer, member of the COVID-19 advisory team at the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences. – We passed the last wave of the disease six months ago. Research shows that post-vaccination and post-vaccination immunity lasts between six and 10 months. So it can be assumed that we are still safe – he adds.

What could BA.5 mean for the future of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Everything we already know about the BA.5 sub-option raises the question of how the COVID-19 pandemic will continue. On the one hand, this mutation is more contagious and cares better for immunity, on the other hand, it does not seem to cause severe symptoms. Dr. Afelt, whom we asked to speak, says directly: – Let’s not delude ourselves that the evolution of the virus will end up with mutation BA.5. Such thinking would be naïve. It is normal that the virus is changing, and we have known it since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s just his nature, a biological process. Let us not forget that it goes on all the time. The virus continues to adapt to the conditions it has.

How will this affect the course of the pandemic? – It also depends on how our organisms adapt to the pathogen, what preventive measures we introduce at the medical level and, finally, how the coronavirus reacts to these changes – says Aneta Afelt.

What will happen next is therefore more of a guess. The “parade” of Omicron sub-variants may continue, and it is possible that new mutations will detect new gaps in the immune system. «No one can say that BA.4 / 5 is the final variant. It is highly probable that additional variants of the Omicron will emerge, ”noted Kei Sato, a virologist from Tokyo University in a June article in Nature.

«Another possibility is for a variant to emerge from a different branch of the SARS-CoV-2 family tree than the one from which Omikron comes. Repeated infections with Omikron can build broad immunity against other sub-variants, opening the way for a completely different mutation of the coronavirus »- we read in a prestigious journal.

How long will the pandemic last?

This is a question that we all keep asking ourselves. We couldn’t help but ask our expert. – The Spanish flu pandemic, which is said to be the greatest epidemiological disaster that has ever happened to mankind, lasted a really long time. It was born in China, then rolled through Europe like a roller (in Spain it got its local name) and finally crossed the Atlantic to North America. In those days, people did not move as intensively as they do today, the evolution of the virus also took longer, notes Aneta Afelt.

How long could the current pandemic last? “I used to say that we need three to five years of patience. Today I am more inclined to say that it is closer to the upper limit – about five years. This is the time that will allow us to better understand the short and long-term consequences of the disease, as well as (hopefully) develop cheap, readily available drugs and modernize vaccines so that, for example, they affect the entire group of human and animal coronaviruses.

There is one more important thing that we must remember, Dr. Afelt notes. – SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic virus. This means that through evolution he was able to pass from species to species. Therefore, we are faced with one more challenge, and a huge one: monitoring the animal population. At the moment, we have rudimentary data on the circulation of pathogens in the animal world. This makes it very difficult to estimate the risk of their evolution, in this case SARS-CoV-2. So questions arise that we still do not know because we have not detected it yet, or are not aware of what to look for? There are many unknowns, but for scientists this is not a surprise.

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