B.C. monitoring a handful of ‘Scrabble variants’ of COVID-19 found in province – CTV
Oct. 27, 2022
They’re nicknamed “Scrabble variants” for the collection of letters identifying them, but there’s nothing fun about the new strains of the Omicron variant spreading around the world and detected in British Columbia labs.
Right now, half of all the variants reported in the B.C. Centre for Disease Control’s weekly update on variants of concern are simply labelled “other” in a literal grey area that’s a catch-all for several strains of COVID-19’s Omicron varietals, including some that are spreading with alarming speed in other parts of the world as scientists suspect vaccines and previous infections provide little protection.
“There’s 20, 30, 40-plus of these sub-lineages so it’d be very difficult to mark them all out, and knowing which one is important each week is difficult,” said Natalie Prystajecky, one of the BCCDC’s top microbiologists. “In different parts of the world, different lineages are creating waves. You’ll see in Singapore XBB drove their wave, which is now on the decline, while in Germany it was BA.2.75.”
