Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C4gMqTirith/ No surprise, but the CDC now announces the appearance of a new CoVid variant.  BA.2.87.1 has just surfaced having infected 9 persons in the Republic of South Africa.  So far, there are no cases of BA.2.87.1 in the US or outside of South Africa, and, for that matter, no significant bump in Covid within South Africa.   That suggests this new variant is not highly transmissible. That having been said, BA.2.87.1 does sport 30 unique mutations in its spike protein always raising the possibility of its escape from the CoVid immunity each of us has built up with vaccinations and infections.  The good news is that most of the recent variants that appeared have been vulnerable to that very immunity. The CDC is closely monitoring this latest CoVid version using case, hospitalization, and wastewater data.  We don’t yet know if this variant will be clinically important.  If it is…remember you heard about it here first.  Stay tuned…. https://www.cdc.gov/ncird/whats-n