By Canada has just found its first case of the coronavirus, specifically the highly mutated BA.2.86 variant of Omicron, in someone in British Columbia who hasn’t traveled outside the province. Health officials reported this on Tuesday, August 29th.
The good news is that the infected person isn’t in the hospital, and this new version of the virus doesn’t seem to pose a greater risk to the local population. That’s according to Bonnie Henry, who’s the top medical expert in British Columbia.
Finding this new version of Omicron in Canada, and in this province in particular, wasn’t really a surprise. Henry and Dix, another health expert, pointed out that COVID-19 keeps spreading around the world, and the virus keeps changing. Henry and Dix said, “We expected BA.2.86 to show up in Canada and the province because COVID-19 keeps spreading globally, and the virus keeps changing.”
This BA.2.86 version of the virus first showed up in Denmark last month. It has more than 35 changes in important parts of the virus compared to the XBB.1.5 version, which was the main one we’ve been dealing with in 2023. The United States, Switzerland, and Israel have also found cases of this new version.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mentioned last week that the BA.2.86 version might be better at causing infections in people who’ve had COVID-19 before or who’ve gotten vaccinated.
In Canada, health experts have noticed more COVID-19 cases in the past few weeks. But, overall, the virus isn’t spreading very quickly.
