COVID: How worried should we be about the new AY.4.2 lineage of the coronavirus?

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COVID-19

COVID: How worried should we be about the new AY.4.2 lineage of the coronavirus?

10 November 2021

The Conversation

By Matthew Bashton and Darren Smith

Wednesday 10 November 2021, 12:10 AM

Covid virus - Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

If the shape of AY.4.2’s spike proteins has changed, antibodies may struggle to bind to them to destroy the virus [Image from Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash]

Just when you thought all the talk of new COVID variants was over, there’s news of yet another one: AY.4.2. But what is it, where did it come from, and should we be concerned?

AY.4.2 is what’s termed a “lineage”. These are labels given to branches of the SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary tree to illustrate their relatedness. They are

COVID-19

References

1. WHO. Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants. who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants

2. COG-UK. VOCs/VUIs in the UK. sars2.cvr.gla.ac.uk/cog-uk

4. Hodcroft EB, Zuber M, Nadeau S, et al. Spread of a SARS-CoV-2 variant through Europe in the summer of 2020. Nature 2021;595:707–12.

5. McCallum M, Walls AC, Sprouse KR, et al. Molecular basis of immune evasion by the delta and kappa SARS-CoV-2 variants. bioRxiv 2021; 12 August online.

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