RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 BA.2 variant
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.02.14.480335
DO 10.1101/2022.02.14.480335
A1 Daichi Yamasoba
A1 Izumi Kimura
A1 Hesham Nasser
A1 Yuhei Morioka
A1 Naganori Nao
A1 Jumpei Ito
A1 Keiya Uriu
A1 Masumi Tsuda
A1 Jiri Zahradnik
A1 Kotaro Shirakawa
A1 Rigel Suzuki
A1 Mai Kishimoto
A1 Yusuke Kosugi
A1 Kouji Kobiyama
A1 Teppei Hara
A1 Mako Toyoda
A1 Yuri L Tanaka
A1 Erika P Butlertanaka
A1 Ryo Shimizu
A1 Hayato Ito
A1 Lei Wang
A1 Yoshitaka Oda
A1 Yasuko Orba
A1 Michihito Sasaki
A1 Kayoko Nagata
A1 Kumiko Yoshimatsu
A1 Hiroyuki Asakura
A1 Mami Nagashima
A1 Kenji Sadamasu
A1 Kazuhisa Yoshimura
A1 Jin Kuramochi
A1 Motoaki Seki
A1 Ryoji Fujiki
A1 Atsushi Kaneda
A1 Tadanaga Shimada
A1 Taka-aki Nakada
A1 Seiichiro Sakao
A1 Takuji Suzuki
A1 Takamasa Ueno
A1 Akifumi Takaori-Kondo
A1 Ken J Ishii
A1 Gideon Schreiber
A1 The Genotype to Phenotype Japan (G2P-Japan) Consortium
A1 Hirofumi Sawa
A1 Akatsuki Saito
A1 Takashi Irie
A1 Shinya Tanaka
A1 Keita Matsuno
A1 Takasuke Fukuhara
A1 Terumasa Ikeda
A1 Kei Sato
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/02/15/2022.02.14.480335.abstract
AB Soon after the emergence and global spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron lineage, BA.1 (ref1, 2), another Omicron lineage, BA.2, has initiated outcompeting BA.1. Statistical analysis shows that the effective reproduction number of BA.2 is 1.4-fold higher than that of BA.1. Neutralisation experiments show that the vaccine-induced humoral immunity fails to function against BA.2 like BA.1, and notably, the antigenicity of BA.2 is different from BA.1. Cell culture experiments show that BA.2 is more replicative in human nasal epithelial cells and more fusogenic than BA.1. Furthermore, infection experiments using hamsters show that BA.2 is more pathogenic than BA.1. Our multiscale investigations suggest that the risk of BA.2 for global health is potentially higher than that of BA.1.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.