BA.4 and BA.5, these are the new faces of Covid: prone to reinfecting, more transmissible and elusive to vaccines

• Situation Spain suffers twice as much income from Covid as it did a year ago

• Latest data Madrid continues to lead the infections with 12,894 positives, twice as many as on Tuesday

The next Covid waves will feature the

.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and its American counterpart (CDC)

.

Most EU countries have detected their presence among the population, still low for these new strains, but on the rise in recent weeks.

A clear example is

"There it seems that they have experienced an increase and now they are going down.

We must observe how it has been and take note," explains Antoni Trilla, head of Preventive Medicine at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and professor at the University of Barcelona.

In Portugal,

.

For this reason, the ECDC warns that the characteristics found in BA.4 and BA.5 indicate that they will become dominant throughout the continent, which will probably reproduce what happened in the Portuguese country in the coming weeks.

José Antonio López Guerrero, director of the Neurovirology group of the Molecular Biology Department of the Autonomous University of Madrid, explains that

that are appearing on the new subvariants or lineages".

In addition, he adds that "of the best known variants,

The first sub-variants were detected in Africa at the beginning of the year. Everything seems to indicate so far, that like the previous variants ,

. Which is something that the evolution of viruses does not pursue."

"What if you want to know is why in Portugal it has already reached 87% of the cases.

", asks López Guerrero.

And in Spain?

On the one hand, Trilla warns that "our neighbors are a few weeks apart and we must observe what is happening there."

On the other hand, López Guerrero stresses that

But what has been seen so far does not constitute a rebound or an outbreak as a result of the appearance of BA .4 and BA.5 as it has been seen in Portugal".

What is the situation in Spain of BA.4 and BA.5?

According to the latest Health report, random screenings using specific PCR for the BA.2 lineage have detected in week 22 of 2022 (May 30 to June 5), percentages that range in the different Autonomous Communities between 55.7% and 91.2%.

That same week,

.

Those with

.

In Madrid, the Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia, no specific data has been collected on these lineages.

Some of the communities in which the new faces of SARS-CoV-2 are taking center stage now have a statistically significant upward trend, as pointed out in the latest report from the Carlos III Health Institute.

This occurs in the Balearic Islands and Extremadura.

The Canary Islands, Castilla La Mancha and Madrid also rose in cases, but this cannot be categorically attributed to these new lineages.

BA.4 and BA.5, more transmissible, how do they evade vaccines?

"

It is even pointed out that they could be less sensitive to immunity to vaccines," says López Guerrero.

This is because

which could give them a growth advantage thanks to a greater immune escape.

These lineages are considered likely to displace BA.2 in the coming weeks in Europe, hence the warning to EU states about increased surveillance.

However, a study published yesterday in 'Nature' points out how these new variants act and how they dodge defenses created naturally and artificially.

Yunlong Cao's team, lead author of the study and a member of Peking University's Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center (BIOPIC),

"Here, along with Spike structural comparisons, we show that BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 exhibit ACE2-binding affinities comparable to BA.2.

against plasma from three-dose vaccination and, more surprisingly,

."

Trilla clarifies some parts of the study: "It must be taken into account that when they talk about serum protection, they are referring to one of those used in China, Sinovac.

".

The preventivist also alludes to the fact that

As Jaime Jesús Pérez, member of the Spanish Association of Vaccinology (AEV), explains, "we must be calm from the point of view that with these new strains we have not seen such a rapid substitution of the existing ones as it went from delta to omicron".

And this has to do with

. Not only with the booster dose, but also with the second dose in the most vulnerable population in the countries that opted for it in spring".

Evasion of natural defenses, getting infected with original omicron and new strains is possible

This comes to put on the table an explanation for the reinfections of

The current data on reinfections in Spain, with the change in surveillance and monitoring, no longer appears in the Renave reports of the ISCIII, it is not known.

Returning to the

study , Trilla explains that "what is extracted is that these new variants have the ability to do two or three things:

, which will

and from a clinical point of view, what we observe

".

And the important thing is that "what is seen in the clinic, in the face offered by the disease caused by BA.4 and BA.5 in the consultation, is the same as what is observed in the laboratory:

. This is that there is a greater ability to avoid the defenses produced naturally by the infection."

López Guerrero insists that "we must remember that

, which no longer exist. So, if this is so, they can

", clinches the virologist.

The recipes of the new vaccines, ready to act

This week the EMA announced that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna candidates adapted to the new variants are already in the

process .

In other words, they have already provided the necessary documentation so that the agency's technicians give priority to the urgent review of the data for its subsequent approval.

"

", explains Pérez.

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