Covid<\/a> symptoms no longer predominantly include loss of taste and smell as they did in the initial years of the pandemic, although this can still occur. There have been increased reports of individuals experiencing gastrointestinal issues such as nausea or diarrhoea.<\/p>\nCurrent studies suggest that cicada is not more likely to result in severe disease than previous variants. However, Prof Ravi Gupta, from Cambridge University, who provided advice to the UK government during the pandemic, stated that people are still likely to experience an unpleasant illness.<\/p>\n
Health experts believe that cicada does not appear to cause any new or unusual symptoms compared to other Omicron variants. Scientists continue to monitor how the virus spreads and evolves.<\/p>\n
Now, following a period of dormancy, cicada has been identified in 23 countries and is spreading throughout the United States. Surveillance of the variant’s symptoms is most developed in America, where it has been found in wastewater across 29 states.<\/p>\n
The US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is tracking cicada and regularly updates its symptom list as more information emerges. It indicates that potential symptoms include:<\/p>\n
Fever or chillsCoughShortness of breath or difficulty breathingSore throatCongestion or runny noseNew loss of taste or smellFatigueMuscle or body achesHeadacheNausea or vomitingDiarrhea<\/p>\n
Specialists suggest that while current vaccines may be less effective against cicada, immunisation still provides substantial protection against severe Covid disease.<\/p>\n
Prof Gupta led part of the research team which documented the first evidence of immune escape for Covid-19 during the pandemic. He served on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG). He told the Mirror: “This is different from the (Covid-19) viruses we have been dealing with for the last two years.<\/p>\n
“It has been found in the UK, has been increasing in prevalence and I would expect it to become the dominant strain. BA.3.2 is undergoing testing right now. We have been looking at it in terms of immune evasion and the immunity that we’ve all got.” The cicada variant is a descendant of the Omicron variant that emerged in 2021 and was initially identified in South Africa in 2024 before appearing to vanish. Prof Gupta believes it was able to develop such numerous mutations to evade immunity by incubating in a single patient for more than a year. This individual would have been unable to eliminate the virus owing to a weakened immune system, such as can happen when the patient also has HIV or is receiving anti-cancer treatment.<\/p>\n
Prof Gupta said: “This new variant has been found in the UK. Some people have done analysis on this suggesting it may be more prevalent among young children. Children get infections all the time but this might be something to do with the fact that they have never been exposed to Covid vaccines.”<\/p>\n
“So this is something we’re looking at in the lab to try and work out why. The problem with this is that it is an infection that spreads fast. Eventually it ends up in someone who is vulnerable.”<\/p>\n
Follow birminghammail:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Need to knowThe Cicada variant – technical name BA.3.2 – is a descendant of Omicron with 75 mutations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-514946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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