We need to talk about the 'Kraken' variant: What is it, and do we know what impact it could have?

XBB.1.5 is uniquely good at breaking the 'door' to the human body, but it's not clear how much of a surge in cases it could cause

This is an extract from a recent edition of The Journal’s coronavirus newsletter, which cuts through the noise and misinformation to give you clear, accessible facts about the coronavirus, Ireland’s fight to contain it, as well as developments further afield.

If it wasn’t, we’d be in a much better situation; a virus that is more stable would make immunity hold up more reliably and allow us to target vaccines significantly better. Rarely do they cause the seismic impact that the arrivals of Alpha, Delta, and Omicron BA.1 – and, of course, the Wuhan variant – did.

You’ll see this referred to as “ACE2 binding” or “higher ACE2 affinity”. ACE2 is a protein that the virus’s own spike protein binds to - I’ll leave it at that, but you can read in more detail here what that means. Is it better at evading our existing immunity? Yes. Again, from WHO: “Along with BQ.1* variants, XBB* variants are the most antibody-resistant variants to date.”

It’s clear that this variant will have an advantage, and will likely grow to become the latest dominant variant in Ireland. It grew significantly in some parts of the United States over recent weeks, but appears to have slowed down to some extent.

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

thejournal_ie /  🏆 32. in İE

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