“If there wasn’t so much hype about BA.2.86, that would actually be the focus of the paper,” Dan Barouch, MD, PhD, told the news outlet, referring to the FL.1.5.1 strain. Barouch is director of one of the labs that conducted the new tests, and he also directs the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts.
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New data released in recent days by a number of research labs, however, have suggested that existing immune defenses might hold up just fine against BA. 2.86. An academic laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Center for Virology & Vaccine Research, headed by Dr. Dan Barouch, found stronger than expected antibody responses to the strain in tests they ran. The results have yet to be published, but were summarized on social media by one of the scientists who conducted the study.
“Two independent labs have basically shown that BA.2.86 essentially is not a further immune escape compared with current variants,” Dan Barouch, MD, PhD, director of the center for virology and vaccine research at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told the news outlet.
The lab tests showed people who had been vaccinated with monovalent shots, had gotten bivalent vaccines or who had recently been infected with an XBB variant were able to neutralize the strain as well as or a bit better than other circulating variants. In both lab studies, people with the highest degree of immunity against BA.2.86 were those who had recently recovered from an XBB infection, suggesting updated shots slated to roll out soon will be effective against it.
“The combination of the large number of mutations and that it seemed to have emerged in many countries around the world at the same time raised the specter that it could be a variant that causes substantial concern,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “That’s why many research groups throughout the world have been trying to generate as much info as quickly as they could about it.”
In a preprint paper, a team led by Barouch reported that people’s immune systems were able to fight off BA.2.86 as well as, if not better than, other circulating variants.
The Beth Israel study also found that the immune response is robust against all variants — including BA.2.86 — after exposure to an XBB infection, which would likely include anyone who contracted COVID-19 since December 2022. That’s particularly good news for the upcoming booster, which is set to be released mid-September and was formulated based on XBB.1.5.
A team led by Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, examined plasma samples from 66 people with a mix of exposures to vaccines and variants. Some had received the bivalent booster distributed last fall, while others hadn’t, and each group included some people who had been recently infected by XBB.
The researchers made two key discoveries. The first is that everyone developed neutralizing antibodies against BA.2.86, and they were not any lower — and in fact were in most cases higher — than those generated against the already-circulating variants. In other words, the new variant does not seem to be as immune evasive as many had worried. “That was somewhat unexpected and welcome news,” Barouch says.
“What I think we’re seeing is the virus continuing to evolve, and then leading to waves of infection, hopefully mostly mild in severity,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, head of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Experiments testing versions of the virus in two U.S. independent laboratories suggest that is unlikely, said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, whose lab led one of the studies.
Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said recent lab studies have shown people who had been infected by an XBB omicron subvariant within the last six months generated antibodies against EG.5, BA.2.86 and other omicron subvariants, suggesting the updated booster will also provide protection against these strains.
As for Covid-19, “at the present time, we are seeing an uptick in infection rates as well as hospitalizations, however, the absolute rates of severe disease, hospitalizations, and death are still very low compared with where we were a year ago and two years ago,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who was not involved in developing either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines but previously helped study the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Boston Globe