Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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A new Covid variant that’s gaining momentum globally has landed in the U.S.

The World Health Organization announced last week that it was monitoring the variant, NB.1.8.1, following a rise in cases in several parts of the world, including Europe, Southeast Asia and North and South America.

The variant appears to be more transmissible than the dominant strain worldwide, LP.8.1, meaning it has the potential to drive up cases this summer.

But it does not seem to be much better than LP.8.1 at evading protection from vaccines or a prior infection. And the WHO has found no evidence that it leads to more severe illness, so the agency has determined that it doesn’t pose an added health risk.

“It’s an important one to track, but it doesn’t show any signs so far of being able to drive a large surge in Covid-19 cases — at least in the U.S.,” said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Federal and state health officials regularly monitor Covid strains to identify potential changes in how the virus behaves and help inform vaccine updates. The strains that have been dominant in the U.S. since late 2021 are versions of the omicron variant and generally produce similar symptoms. NB.1.8.1 is part of that lineage.

Infectious disease doctors said NB.1.8.1 could potentially lead to a small surge of infections for two reasons: The U.S. hasn’t seen a Covid wave in awhile and less than a quarter of adults have received the latest booster, meaning population immunity has likely waned.

“It may unfortunately come back with a little bit of vengeance on us. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, but I am concerned that we may be setting ourselves up for that with this combination of factors,” said Dr. Thomas Russo, chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Covid cases typically rise twice a year — in the summer and winter — regardless of what variant is circulating, said Dr. Scott Roberts, associate medical director of infection prevention at the Yale School of Medicine.

“I’m going to go ahead and guess that it’s going to lead to an uptick in the summer — probably a mild to moderate one,” he said of NB.1.8.1.

A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there have been fewer than 20 sequences of NB.1.8.1 reported in the U.S. to date. That means the variant is not prevalent enough to appear on the CDC’s dashboard, which lists variants that make up more than 1% of national Covid cases over a two-week period.

The Arizona Department of Health Services said it identified three samples of the variant in late April and early May through routine surveillance. NB.1.8.1 has also been detected in Rhode Island, according to the state’s health department. The Cleveland Clinic said it had detected a few cases in Ohio.

“Whether it gets a foothold in this country and it becomes our new dominant variant or not remains to be seen,” Russo said.

The variant is now dominant in China, where it has spread rapidly since the start of the year. By late April, it made up nearly 11% of genetic sequences submitted to a global virus database called GISAID, up from 2.5% earlier that month.

Meanwhile, LP.8.1 has become less prevalent since mid-April, according to the WHO.

A preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed, found that NB.1.8.1 had the “potential for future dominance” over other circulating variants due to additional mutations that could make it more transmissible.

People who haven’t been vaccinated or had Covid in awhile should get a booster now if they’re eligible, Roberts said. NB.1.8.1 is a cousin of JN.1 (the variant targeted by the current booster), so the vaccine should protect against it to some degree.

The Food and Drug Administration has asked drugmakers to update Covid vaccines to target the LP.8.1 variant this fall. Data from Pfizer and Moderna suggest the updated vaccines would offer protection against NB.1.8.1 as well.

But the FDA has said it will limit its approval of updated Covid shots to older adults and younger people with a medical condition that puts them at risk of severe illness. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday stopped recommending Covid vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.

“I haven’t seen any substantial new data to guide these decisions,” Roberts said.

Doctors said they worry that, because of those changes, pregnant people and children under 5 may be vulnerable to severe outcomes from Covid this winter. And even healthy adults who’ve been vaccinated before might not have optimal protection, Russo said.

“Even for people that have received one shot, two shots, even three shots — yes, that’s better than no shot,” he said. “But we know that immunity wanes and we know the virus evolves.”

The COVID-19 variant that may be driving a recent rise in cases in some parts of the world has earned a new nickname: “razor blade throat” COVID.

That’s because the variant — NB.1.8.1. or “Nimbus” — may cause painful sore throats. The symptom has been identified by doctors in the United Kingdom, India and elsewhere, according to media outlets in those countries.

Other COVID-19 symptoms of any variant include fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath or loss of taste or smell.

Experts say there isn’t major cause for concern with the Nimbus variant, but here ‘s what else you need to know about it.

Here’s where the variant causing ‘razor blade throat’ is spreading
The rise in cases late last month is primarily in eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and western Pacific regions, the World Health Organization said May 28. The new variant had reached nearly 11% of sequenced samples reported globally in mid-May.

Airport screening in the United States detected the new variant in travelers arriving from those regions to destinations in California, Washington state, Virginia and New York.

You aren’t likely to get sicker from this variant than others
Not so far, anyway.

The WHO said some western Pacific countries have reported increases in COVID cases and hospitalizations, but there’s nothing so far to suggest that the disease associated with the new variant is more severe compared to other variants.


COVID-19 vaccines are effective against the Nimbus variant
Yes.

The WHO has designated Nimbus as a “variant under monitoring” and considers the public health risk low at the global level. Current vaccines are expected to remain effective.

Scientists still aren’t sure how the COVID-19 pandemic – the worst health emergency in a century – began.

That was the unsatisfying conclusion from an expert group charged by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the pandemic’s origins in its final report.

Marietjie Venter, the group’s chair, said at a press briefing that most scientific data supports the hypothesis that the new coronavirus jumped to humans from animals.

That was also the conclusion drawn by the first WHO expert group that investigated the pandemic’s origins in 2021, when scientists concluded the virus likely spread from bats to humans, via another intermediary animal.

Venter said that after more than three years of work, WHO’s expert group was unable to get the necessary data to evaluate whether or not COVID-19 was the result of a lab accident, despite repeated requests for hundreds of genetic sequences and more detailed biosecurity information that were made to the Chinese government.

“Therefore, this hypothesis could not be investigated or excluded,” she said. “It was deemed to be very speculative, based on political opinions and not backed up by science”.

She said that the 27-member group did not reach a consensus; one member resigned earlier this week and three others asked for their names to be removed from the report.

Venter said there was no evidence to prove that COVID-19 had been manipulated in a lab, nor was there any indication that the virus had been spreading before December 2019 anywhere outside of China.

Until more scientific data becomes available, the origins of how SARS-CoV-2 entered human populations will remain inconclusive,” Venter said, referring to the scientific name for the COVID-19 virus.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was a “moral imperative” to determine how COVID began, noting that the virus killed at least 20 million people, wiped at least $10 trillion (€8.8 trillion) from the global economy and upended the lives of billions of people.

Until more scientific data becomes available, the origins of how SARS-CoV-2 entered human populations will remain inconclusive,” Venter said, referring to the scientific name for the COVID-19 virus.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was a “moral imperative” to determine how COVID began, noting that the virus killed at least 20 million people, wiped at least $10 trillion (€8.8 trillion) from the global economy and upended the lives of billions of people.

Last September, researchers zeroed in on a short list of animals they think might have spread COVID-19 to humans, including racoon dogs, civet cats, and bamboo rats.

Will we ever know for sure how COVID-19 began? Not without more data from China, WHO says[/url]