Thread by @DrEricDing

⚠️BREAKING—HOTEL CROSS TRANSMISSION OF #B11529—Traveler from South Africa🇿🇦 flew to Hong Kong🇭🇰 with new variant—but wasn’t discovered until 4th day of quarantine on 2nd PCR. Another guest across hallway cross-infected—only positive on 8th day on 4th PCR! Both Pfizer vaccinated🧵

2) the viral load of these two with #B11529 in Hong Kong hotels were VERY high. PCR Ct values of 18 and 19!!! That’s insanely high considering they were negative on recent PCR tests. Damn, looks like vaccine evasion could be real with this variant.

https://twitter.com/nzm8qs/status/1463900553516236803

3) and hell yes it’s very airborne. The hotel guests were in different room across the hallway from each other. Environmental samples found the virus in 25 of 87 swab across both rooms.

https://twitter.com/nzm8qs/status/1463900893510705156

4) I think border and travel restrictions make sense. Especially since Hong Kong 🇭🇰 only caught the case because of a mandatory hotel quarantine. Which countries in the west still have that??? Almost none.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1463978550743248899

5) This #B11529 variant is bad bad bad. Scientists worldwide are worried. It has a very bad spike mutation profile and it is spreading fast across South Africa 🇿🇦— see thread 🧵 below 👇

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1463925612402429952

6) 32 mutations in one spike protein is helluva a lot. Its “extremely high”. And it has real concerns because of the bad nature of these mutations too.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1463765169830572039

7) South Africa 🇿🇦 health leaders are extremely worried about #B11529. We expect the WHO will issue a new Greek name to it soon - likely the #NuVariant.

8) the #B11529 Nu variant seems to have a lot of antibody escape properties— escape in multiple epitope classes of the antibody. This is a really bad thing.

https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1464005688334557184

9) the spread across South Africa is quite sudden and widespread… and change from 1% positivity to suddenly 30% in a week!

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1463977896834473993

10) cases still low but this surge in #B11529 is no joke. Take it seriously.

11) Let’s finally look at the relative growth plotted by @jburnmurdoch - cases of #B11529 surging much faster than Delta. Caveat is that cases are low. But this would be very worrisome if confirmed in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned. Stay safe. 🙏

12) 500% more infectious for #B11529 is jaw dropping if it is true. Let’s hope the early data is wrong. We actually REALLY REALLY want this early data to be wrong … because if it’s not wrong… it’s cataclysmic. See new 🧵 below.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1464119235655970819

13) Experts estimate that South Africa 🇿🇦 is already 72% infected. Natural infection clearly isn’t enough to stop #B11529 currently.

https://twitter.com/AliHMokdad/status/1463950842461966336

14) Israel’s testing has now found 3 cases of #B11529 - the second country outside of Africa to have identified it. This is bad. Israel 🇮🇱 and HK are very strict. I just worry for the non strict quarantine and entry testing countries now.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1464131444524077057

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https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1464138370368561200

16) Latest models suggest #B11529 could be as much as 500% more infectious. That is indescribably bad. See thread 🧵

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1464119235655970819

17) The new name for the #B11529 variant is OMICRON—which the @WHO warns has higher risk of reinfection! #Omicron

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1464295166639022092

18) WHO mentioned reinfection risk (ie natural infection not a good idea)— it’s based on lots of research in bad mutations among the 32 mutations that #B11529 #OmicronVariant has in its spike protein.

Figure by @jbloom_lab.
jbloomlab.github.io/SARS2_RBD_Ab_e…