It looks like the 5 shots my father in law had did help, he's starting to get better despite having everything against him, age, heart condition, diabetes, overweight. A great relief, last week we were fearing for the worst.
The virus is getting 'smarter' though
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/ba-2-75-2-new-omicron-subvariant-can-evade-nearly-all-protective-antibodies-study-1.6111863
A new study from researchers in Sweden suggests the world could be in for a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases this winter due to new mutations creating variants that could avoid immunity from vaccines or previous infections.
The variant BA.2.75.2, one of the latest developments in the Omicron lineage of COVID-19, can evade the majority of neutralizing antibodies in the blood, the study found, and is also resistant to several monoclonal antibody antiviral treatments that were created to treat those ill with COVID-19.
The mutations that make this possible in BA.2.75.2 are popping up in other variants as the virus continues to expand and evolve, researchers say — and it's still unknown whether bivalent vaccines will provide more robust immunity against this particular variant.
BA.4 / BA.5 bivalent vaccines are available now, but the virus has moved on again already :/
"While antibody immunity is not completely gone, BA.2.75.2 exhibited far more dramatic resistance than variants we've previously studied, largely driven by two mutations in the receptor binding domain of the spike protein," Ben Murrell, corresponding author and assistant professor at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at Karolinska Institutet, said in a press release.
Currently BA.5 is one of the most dominant variants in North America, the study said. According to the most recent data from the Public Health Agency of Canada, BA.5 and BA.4 are currently dominating in Canada. As well, the World Health Organization has been monitoring other variants, including BA.2.75.
BA.2.75.2 is the latest mutation of BA.2.75. Previous research has shown that BA.2.75 is not as efficient as BA.5 at escaping antibodies, but BA.2.75.2 has additional mutations that made researchers sit up and take notice. Several specific mutations within the variant BA.2.75.2 had already been associated with a higher escape percentage in previous variants, the study said. But BA.2.75.2 combines mutations in a way that could.
Early days, there's still hope the new booster shots will help a bit
Researchers hope that the new bivalent vaccines, which were modified to include protection against early Omicron variants, may provide more robust antibodies to block these newer variants, but scientists don't have enough data yet.
"We expect them to be beneficial, but we don't yet know by how much," Murrell said.
