A total of 28 cases of a new COVID variant were from a single outbreak in a care home, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said.
The new variant, named BA.2.86, has “a high number of mutations” and a total of 34 cases have been confirmed in the UK.
Of these, five people were hospitalised. No deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported among the cases.
Staff and residents at the Norfolk care home were asked to undergo PCR testing after an unusually high number of people became unwell.
Of the 38 residents tested, 33 tested positive for Covid along with 12 members of staff.
The positive samples were then sent for whole genome sequencing to determine which variants had spread. Half of the staff members and 22 of the residents had the BA.2.86 variant.
The locations of the six other cases have not been confirmed but “multiple unlinked cases in different regions without reported travel history suggests a degree of community transmission within the UK,” the agency said.
While it is “too early to draw conclusions” on how the variant could continue to spread, the UKHSA added that this incident “is an early indicator that it may be sufficiently transmissible to have impact in close contact settings”.
The BA.2.86 mutation was first detected in Denmark on 24 July and has also been discovered in the US and Israel.
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It is thought to be the likely ancestor of the BA.2 variant, which originated in southern Africa and was first detected in the UK by late 2021.
The “high number of mutations” means that the spike proteins on the outside of the virus, which allow it to enter and infect human cells, will change their shape.
“Having changed their shape, they may become more infectious, they may become more disease-causing,” Dr Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease control expert from the University of Exeter, told Sky News.
“On the other hand, they may not. We just don’t know yet,” he said.
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The UKHSA is continuing to investigate and will publish updates in due course.
More than 1.2 million people in the UK currently have symptomatic COVID, according to an estimate from King’s College London’s ZOE study.
The ongoing study uses data from app users to predict infection rates across the country.
Data for 6 September shows 100,516 new daily cases across the UK.
