Here’s what to know about the new COVID variant ‘razor blade throat’
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COVID-19 is still with us, and there’s a new variant accounting for about a third of cases in the US. Referred to as “Nimbus,” the NB 1.8.1. comes from the omicron variant.
“It has been spreading into the United States now from the Mediterranean area in Europe,” Michael Mina, an independent epidemiologist and immunologist based in Boston, told The World.
“It is likely going to dominate, is my guess — although another variant could come around — similar to omicron and other variants since the beginning of the pandemic. It has some fitness advantages, meaning it can spread in the background of the immunological memory pool that humans now have.”
Some people who have experienced Nimbus report that one of the quite painful symptoms is a very sore throat, which has earned the variant the name “razor blade throat.”
The World Health Organization, however, has not yet rated it as a variant of concern.
These viruses spread by mutating a bit and evading the pre-existing immunity, which is normal for viruses in general, according to Mina.
“And so, this one seems to have done a decent job at developing some mutations that allow it to get around our protective immunity, at least in our upper respiratory tract,” he explained. “And I expect that this is going be the summer wave, as we’ve seen each year during the pandemic, and this virus will probably be a dominant virus as we move into July and August.”
Mina discussed the implications of the variant further with The World’s Host Marco Werman.
So, we see these waves, and a lot of it is because of the differences in people’s exposure to humidity or air conditioning, for example.
Now, the folks who are not going to be as protected are the same folks that have always not been as protected. These are the elderly individuals who are vulnerable, individuals who might be immune suppressed. These people will still be at greater risk for severe disease. And that’s why, especially when it comes to vaccinating, we should still be really focusing especially on ensuring that older individuals and higher-risk individuals still get vaccinated, even in the context of widespread immunity where we might be seeing other groups, especially globally, putting less emphasis on annual boosting.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large">
<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A vial and syringes of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara Sikh temple in Luton, in the UK, March 21, 2021.Alberto Pezzali/AP/File photo</figcaption></figure>And so, what that meant is we had to have multiple years of gaining immunity to the virus before we’d start to get onto an off-ramp, which I would say we’re well on. If not, we might even be off the off-ramp at this point from the pandemic. And now it’s been five years. Most humans have seen the virus multiple times. Most humans or many, many humans have been vaccinated multiple times. And so, we have built up this big bedrock of immunity across the population.
And so, the pandemic is in this transition phase still, where I think it’s becoming a seasonal virus. But that all said, I think we are in this transition phase that I view as a natural evolution of the pandemic into an endemic.
Parts of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.
The post Here’s what to know about the new COVID variant ‘razor blade throat’ appeared first on The World from PRX.
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