The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are already more than 90% of cases in Brazil; Study shows they are more resistant to the vaccine | health

Molecular geneticist Salmo Raskin explains that “past vaccines and infections themselves do not provide adequate protection for omicron, but immunization protects against mortality and severe disease, and this is exactly the current concern.”

According to him, the BA.5 variant is the most aggravating in aspects of anxiety, Being the most infected of all that has been discovered so far. That is, people who have only been infected with microns They have a high chance of getting injured againBecause it does not cause an immune response of the organism leading to the formation of antibodies. “Because it is less severe, the immune response is milder,” Raskin says.

“BA.4 and BA.5 partially save the chance of lung injury, which was reduced with BA.1 omicron. We have seen an increase in pediatric patients also as a result of the overall increase in cases. It is in the same proportion as in adults,” explains my specialist Infectious Diseases Marcelo Otsuka.

The omnin strain continues to evolve, successively producing other subspecies that are not only more transmissible, but also more elusive to the immune system. That is, it spreads more easily and the body does not always fight it.

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A study published in the journal Nature explains that transmission has become frequent because the omicron and its sub-variants contain many mutations in the spike protein, the key the virus uses to enter cells and multiply.

Research shows that Bachelor 5 and Bachelor 4 The vaccine is 4.2 times more resistant than the BA variant. .2, for example. For comparison, the researchers said that the BA.2.12.1 variant, which fueled the surge in US cases and hospital admissions in May and which put 87% of all New York State counties on high-risk Covid alert, is only 1.8 times stronger than BA 2.

“The greater transmissibility is due to the fact that mutations determine it Increasing the ability of the virus to bind to the human cell. That is, it requires a lower viral load to cause disease. However, people with full vaccination coverage have at least four times less chance of infection than those who have not been vaccinated,” the infection specialist explains.

The BA.5 variant currently accounts for more than 40% of all positive samples of the Covid virus in New York state and is the predominant strain in the United States, according to information from NBC.

Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, issued an alert last week as the number of hospitalizations surged, alerting a new wave of infections caused by BA.4 and BA.5 sub variants.

“The virus causes mutations to change the amino acids of the spike protein, making part of it unknown to the organism. The mutation works by camouflaging the virus, which makes our defenses against the virus challenging,” the geneticist says.

However, the widespread spread of the virus does not necessarily mean that it is weakening. This is due to its ability to mutate. “We shouldn’t think that SARS Cove will become any less aggressive, lethal, or easier to control,” Otsuka repeats.

Also, according to the Nature study, they are highly able to evade neutralizing antibodies (which defend the cell from infectious particles), which compromises the efficacy of vaccines. However, Immunization remains the safest and most effective way to prevent infection and reinfection.

“If we look at genetic surveillance for all countries, where population mobility is starting to return and mitigation measures have been reduced, we see that variants are fighting much more. We are transmitting the virus now, and we are putting all Something on the vaccine bill, which in itself does not stop transmission.It reaffirms that the variants are not the cause of the increase in cases, but the result of uncontrolled transmission.