Health experts across the globe have indicated that a new Covid variant could 'wreak havoc' on the world, with the latest fast-spreading strain taking its toll in India as well as making ground in the UK in recent weeks.
Just as 'normal' life begins to resume and the summer weather finally makes an appearance in the UK, the unwelcome news of a potential new variant of fast-spreading Omicron has cast doubts in the mind's of experts.
The BA.2.75 variant, or Centaurus, was first picked up in India in early May and after arriving in the UK, cases have been moving in a sharp upward trend, as in recent weeks, health experts at the University of Edinburgh, have expressed concerns over the growing number of cases in Scotland.
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It was also confirmed by the Office of National Statistics, that the UK had surpassed 200,000 deaths from Covid-19 since the pandemic broke out two years ago.
The Irish Mirror reported how the new variant is spreading faster than the extremely transmissible BA.5 version. BA.2.75 has also since been detected in at least ten other countries so far, including the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Germany and Canada.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention Control (ECDC) has placed Centaurus in the category of a "variant under monitoring" which means that there is a worry that it could be the most transmissible strain to date or even cause severe symptoms.
At this point, the evidence is still being gathered and assessed, however, the World Health Organisation is also closely monitoring it.
Despite this WHO chief scientist, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, says it's all still simply a suggestion that it could be worse as there are not enough samples to assess its severity yet.
Virologists are also on alert because of the number of mutations BA.2.75 contains, and Dr Stephen Griffin, a virologist at the University of Leeds says: “This could mean that it has had the chance to evolve an advantage over an already successful virus lineage.
He told the Guardian: “This time last year, many were convinced that Delta represented an evolutionary pinnacle for the virus, but the emergence of Omicron and the vast increase in variability and antibody evasiveness is a sign that we cannot as a population follow an influenza-like plan to keep pace with viral evolution.”
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