Corona variant AY.4.2 – fast killer mutation spreads unsupervised!
The true spread of the AY.4.2 variant, which could spread faster than Delta, unclear due to sequencing problems. Dangerous mutation could have spread strongly long ago!
How strong is the new variant already?
Current data on the spread of the AY.4.2 COVID-19 variant appears uncertain as scientists work to release sequencing information.
AY.4.2, an offshoot of the delta variant, has made headlines in recent weeks for its rapid spread in the United Kingdom, where it now accounts for about 12 percent of newly sequenced samples.
Investigations ongoing
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It is characterized by new major mutations in its spike protein: A222V and Y145H. Investigations into AY.4.2 are ongoing, but some scientists suspect it may spread better than earlier Delta versions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed AY.4.2 in its October 26 weekly epidemiological report, noting that more than 26,000 cases had been reported from 42 countries at that time.
Keeping track of the spread of the variant is not easy. There has been wide variation in the reported spread of AY.4.2, particularly in the United States.
Last Monday, Newsweek reported that AY.4.2 had been detected in 32 states, with a total of 130 cases reported in the country.
This is according to data from GISAID – a highly respected global variant tracking network that relies on scientists uploading COVID sequencing data – which was subsequently visualized by Outbreak.Info.
Today, however, Outbreak.Info shows that only 11 cases have been reported in the U.S. from a total of 10 states. GISAID data shows similar numbers.
Jeffrey Barrett, a COVID-19 geneticist at the UK’s Wellcome Sanger Institute, explained this discrepancy in the data by saying that the global sequencing system is currently having problems.
“It’s a complicated scientific problem to update the sequence classification system, which is maintained exclusively by academics,” he told Newsweek. “And usually this sort of thing happens on a timescale of years, whereas now the whole world expects daily updates, and occasionally there are obvious glitches, like when the number of states changes from day to day.”
Part of the problem has to do with Pango’s COVID classification system, which became widely used during the pandemic and is responsible for variant names like B.1.1.7 or B.1.351, with which many people will now be familiar.
Because COVID-19 provides such an overwhelming amount of information, lineages are sometimes reclassified, which can lead to temporary fluctuations in the data.
“There have been a number of corrections to Pango’s classification of the lineages,” a spokesperson for Outbreak.Info told Newsweek.
AY.4.2 doesn’t have a new name, but those changes could be the reason for the data discrepancies.