Covid, first case of Nimbus variant in Italy

Icardi: "No alarm, it is neither more serious nor worse". And Bassetti warns: "In Genoa 1 death from devastating pneumonia with another more widespread variant that eludes vaccines"

The first case in Italy of the new Covid Nimbus variant (NB.1.8.1) was recorded in Genoa . The new mutation of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, detected at the San Martino polyclinic hospital in a 69-year-old 'fragile' patient with an oncohematological disease, "is not surprising. It was expected. Microorganisms circulate rapidly in this global village that is our planet. And now this variant has a worldwide prevalence of around 12%. We expected that sooner or later it would be isolated in Italy. It is a matter of gradually seeing as surveillance continues whether it will become the predominant subvariant, that is, it will exceed 50%, or whether in the competition with the other subvariants it will remain represented, but not in a majority way". Giancarlo Icardi, coordinator of the regional hygiene laboratory, explains this to Adnkronos Salute, reassuring: "There is no emergency, there is no alarm".

How Nimbus behaves

The Nimbus variant, Icardi continues, "has good transmissibility, but does not have different characteristics either in terms of virulence or contagiousness compared to the other subvariants that have recently circulated and which are all part of that large Omicron family, all 'cousins' of each other" . Confirming that there is no cause for alarm for Nimbus is the fact that at the moment "it is indeed a variant under monitoring, but neither the World Health Organization nor the bodies responsible for giving indications on vaccine formulations or drug resistance have reported anything".

In essence, Icardi reiterates, "we are only faced with a further evolution typical of coronaviruses of which Sars-CoV-2 is a part. And the rapid circulation of new subvariants is a fact that we know well: we humans draw borders on the earth that viruses do not respect, obviously". This case, he underlines, "is normal, given that viruses never go on vacation. From a practical point of view , it does not cause a different or more serious or worse pathology , it is simply an evolution of the virus that modifies its characteristics to survive, partially escape the immune system and have a better chance of replicating".

Not only Nimbus, Bassetti's alarm

At San Martino in Genoa, which recorded the first case of the Nimbus NB.1.8.1 variant, "unfortunately we had a case of LP.8.1 - a very widespread variant of Sars-CoV-2 - which led to a death about ten days ago ". The infection struck "a young patient , 66 years old, Canadian, who unfortunately died from complications of a very aggressive form of Covid that we had not seen for over 2 years . An apparently immunocompetent patient, without particular health problems, who arrived with a devastating form of Covid pneumonia and died after a couple of weeks of intensive care". This was reported to Adnkronos Salute by Matteo Bassetti, director of Infectious Diseases at San Martino.

The case of LP.8.1, Bassetti specifies, involved "a subject who had had 6 doses of vaccine and therefore seems to be a variant that is very elusive of immunity . I believe that it is time to think about updated vaccines also for these new variants that seem to elude both vaccine and natural immunity", concludes the infectious disease specialist. LP.8.1 is precisely the variant that is recommended to target in the next vaccination campaigns, for example in Europe.