TY - JOUR T1 - Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 BA.2 variant JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2022.02.14.480335 SP - 2022.02.14.480335 AU - Daichi Yamasoba AU - Izumi Kimura AU - Hesham Nasser AU - Yuhei Morioka AU - Naganori Nao AU - Jumpei Ito AU - Keiya Uriu AU - Masumi Tsuda AU - Jiri Zahradnik AU - Kotaro Shirakawa AU - Rigel Suzuki AU - Mai Kishimoto AU - Yusuke Kosugi AU - Kouji Kobiyama AU - Teppei Hara AU - Mako Toyoda AU - Yuri L Tanaka AU - Erika P Butlertanaka AU - Ryo Shimizu AU - Hayato Ito AU - Lei Wang AU - Yoshitaka Oda AU - Yasuko Orba AU - Michihito Sasaki AU - Kayoko Nagata AU - Kumiko Yoshimatsu AU - Hiroyuki Asakura AU - Mami Nagashima AU - Kenji Sadamasu AU - Kazuhisa Yoshimura AU - Jin Kuramochi AU - Motoaki Seki AU - Ryoji Fujiki AU - Atsushi Kaneda AU - Tadanaga Shimada AU - Taka-aki Nakada AU - Seiichiro Sakao AU - Takuji Suzuki AU - Takamasa Ueno AU - Akifumi Takaori-Kondo AU - Ken J Ishii AU - Gideon Schreiber AU - The Genotype to Phenotype Japan (G2P-Japan) Consortium AU - Hirofumi Sawa AU - Akatsuki Saito AU - Takashi Irie AU - Shinya Tanaka AU - Keita Matsuno AU - Takasuke Fukuhara AU - Terumasa Ikeda AU - Kei Sato Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/02/15/2022.02.14.480335.abstract N2 - 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. ER -