Originally Published by RollingStone
There’s a new, more contagious form of the novel-coronavirus. It’s got a greater ability to evade our antibodies. And it’s spreading easier than ever.
You’ve read these words before, and you’ll almost certainly read them again as the Covid pandemic grinds into its fourth calendar year. But pay attention, because there’s something new about XBB.1.5, also known as Kraken, the latest Omicron subvariant that’s quickly becoming the dominant form of SARS-CoV-2 across much of the world. XBB.1.5 evolved after a couple of big genetic twists and turns.
The virus still has the potential to surprise us. And that can mean only one thing: “SARS-CoV-2 seems like it’s going to be with us for a long time,” says Matthew Frieman, a University of Maryland School of Medicine immunologist and microbiologist.
Kraken features a key mutation that geneticists call “F486P.” It’s a seemingly small change on the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it to grab onto and infect our cells. F486P works by boosting the spike’s ability to “bind” to one particular part of our cells called the ACE2 receptor. That small change has enormous implications. F486P allows XBB.1.5 to retain all the most dangerous qualities of its parent subvariants, while also adding a new quality: extreme transmissibility.
Basically, F486P makes XBB.1.5 really, really contagious — much more contagious than its immediate predecessors. But it also inherited from these same predecessors an alarming potential to evade our antibodies.
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