AI Summary
The research from UNC Charlotte's CIPHER found that SARS-CoV-2 variants BA.2.86 and JN.1 are not significantly better than Omicron at evading immune responses and causing infections, despite having a high number of mutations. Despite initial concerns, extensive computational analyses showed only small, statistically insignificant changes in immune evasion and transmissibility compared to previous variants. The results challenge the assumption that severity of current variants is linked to the number of mutations.
New research from UNC Charlotte’s Center for Computational Intelligence to Predict Health and Environmental Risks (CIPHER) has found that the two most prevalent strains of the virus that cause COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 variants BA.2.86 and JN.1, are not significantly better than their predecessor Omicron at evading immune responses and causing infections despite having a high number of mutations compared to previous variants.
When first identified, Omicron offshoots BA.2.86 and its close relative JN.1 raised significant public health concerns. These concerns were tied to the fact that the original Omicron variant was highly mutated, resulting in both immune evasion and breakthrough infection, as well as more infectious and highly-mutated compared to earlier variants.
There was some speculation that large numbers of new mutations in BA.2.86 and JN.1 conferred a greater ability of these variants to evade the human immune system and be more transmissible. Extensive computational analyses conducted by a team of UNC Charlotte scholars and students determined that these variants only had small, statistically insignificant changes in immune evasion and transmissibility infection capacity compared to earlier variants, including Omicron.
These results really surprised me. The fact that Omicron, with its large set of mutations, led to greater immune evasion and a surge in cases and hospitalizations was predictable. However, BA.2.86 and JN.1 have yet another large set of mutations, and while we have seen some signals of increased prevalence of these two variants in wastewater and genomic surveillance, there has not been an accompanying large surge in cases or