A heavily mutated variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 appears to be affecting primarily children, scientists say, though it’s not causing more severe disease – in kids or in adults.
Rather, experts say the fact that the virus is breaking with its pattern of being a menace, primarily, of older adults is a telling detail. It’s something to study and understand so that scientists can better predict the behavior of this ever-evolving virus.
Although Covid-19 is circulating at a very low level right now, the US is just starting to contend with this sleeper branch of the Omicron family tree, a variant called BA.3.2, which has been nicknamed “Cicada,” after the insect’s ability to disappear and then reemerge after years underground.
This variant has been spotted in 23 countries and in wastewater from 25 US states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which quietly published a report on the virus last month. It appears to be circulating in the US at low levels, although testing has been scaled back since the height of the pandemic, so it may be more widespread than currently known.
Current vaccines are still believed to offer some protection, and scientists say that the new variant is so “meh” in terms of the trouble it’s been causing that it’s not even clear whether we need to update the shots to better protect against it.
“It’s super interesting from a viral evolution standpoint,” said Dr. Alex Greninger, head of the Division of Infectious Disease Diagnostics at the University of Washington’s Department of Laboratory Medicine. He noted that for a variant that first appeared in November 2024, it’s certainly taking its time to make a move, and it may end up having very little real-world impact.
“That’s been about a year and a half that this thing has had to run its course or to increase,” Greninger said, and it hasn’t done very much. “It’s not a nothingburger, but it’s like adding grilled onions to your burger.”
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Scientists think that for two years, BA.3 infected a single person who didn’t have enough immune function to completely fight it off, [Dr. T. Ryan Gregory, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada] said. These kinds of chronic infections are a prolonged war between the virus and the immune system, in which the body exerts pressure on the virus that makes it constantly change. In some cases, after a long-term infection, the virus is able to re-emerge and begin to circulate again, as seems to have happened in this case.
In November 2024, BA.3.2 popped up in a nose swab of a 5-year-old boy in South Africa, and it looked very different than its parent virus.
Normally, new offshoots of variants may have a handful of gene changes compared with the virus they evolved from. BA.3.2 has 53 changes to its spike – the part that docks onto cells – compared with BA.3 and roughly 70 mutations compared with the original coronavirus that emerged in 2019.
It was first picked up in the US last summer, in a traveler from the Netherlands. In January, the first clinical sample from a sick patient turned out to be BA.3.2.
Its numerous changes might help it slip past the immunity created by past infections and vaccination, but unlike other highly mutated variants of SARS-CoV-2, this one hasn’t shown any signs of global dominance.
So that’s good news. COVID continues to mutate rapidly, but (knock wood, light candle, cross yourself) that hasn’t led to anything quite like some of the previous strains. You should keep getting periodic boosters if you’re eligible, and if there’s ever a new version of the vaccine, be sure to get that as well. And keep those fingers crossed. USA Today and TPR, which notes that Cicada has been detected in Texas, has more.