SARS-CoV-2 continues to mutate, as is natural for a virus, always trying to evolve news ways of infecting us. Though the pandemic has seemingly slipped from most people's minds, there are still dedicated teams of virus trackers who are closely monitoring these microscopic changes, to see if they can predict which ones may prove problematic, like the Omicron variant.
In August, virus trackers discovered a new strain — BA.2.86, nicknamed “Pirola” — that was as genetically different from Omicron as Omicron was from the original "wild type" strain from Wuhan, China. With nearly double the number of mutations on the spike protein than other strains, Pirola has a stronger ability to bind to our cells and is thus more infectious. However, without a specific mutation in which neighboring genes swap places called the “FLip mutation,” Pirola didn’t spread throughout the population as quickly as many other variants that do have this mutation did — like EG.5 and HV.1, which together account for over 47% of estimated cases in the U.S.
