BA.2.86 COVID-19 variant detected in NYC sewage, health commissioner says

A new variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 has been detected in New York City sewage, the city’s health commissioner said in a statement on Tuesday.

“While we have yet to find it in a specimen from a local resident, it is almost certainly circulating here,” said the commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan.

The new strain, BA.2.86, has drawn attention from researchers and public health experts because of its dozens of mutations. 

In an Aug. 23 risk assessment, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers said the strain may be “more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines,” though there was no evidence it caused more severe illness. 

That document cited nine cases of the variant reported globally in Michigan, Virginia, Denmark, South Africa, Israel and the United Kingdom.

Experts say wastewater surveillance, the technique referred to in the city release, is increasingly valuable given the diminished role of lab testing and the power of algorithms that can predict infection spikes and hospitalizations days before they occur. That gives medical professionals and public health officials time to prepare.

The city release did not include any information about the abundance of the BA.2.86 strain that was detected or say when it was detected, and a spokesman for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's press office did not provide that information. 

In a release on Tuesday that did not mention the city discovery, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that following reports of the new variant, state Department of Health researchers and academic colleagues would continue expanded wastewater surveillance and lab testing. The state will also continue to distribute N95 masks and test kits to local officials by request, the release said.

Dave Larsen, professor and chair of Syracuse University’s Public Health Department who works on wastewater surveillance with state researchers, said it could take up to two weeks to do the testing and calculations.

Wastewater surveillance already this summer gave “very early” warnings about a statewide increase in COVID-19 transmission, he said. On Long Island and nationally, COVID-19 hospitalizations have also increased, but the CDC has said they are likely not driven by the new variant. 

"The state and public health officials are prepared and I imagine the hospitals are prepared," Larsen said. "... I don't know if people will do anything different. It would be good if people would consider wearing masks and social distancing again."

Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, said the New York City discovery “absolutely” meant that detection of the strain could be expected on Long Island. But, he said, “It’s too early to know whether this variant is going to really change the trajectory of what’s going on.” Earlier variants this year have had muted impact, he said.

“It’s a good idea to take the new booster” when it's released in the coming weeks and to follow positivity and hospitalization rates, he said. He suggested masking in some high-risk areas or simply avoiding those areas to begin with.

Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP at Columbia University and Columbia World Projects, and professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, said the appearance of the new strain in New York City was unsurprising, and that experts would be looking for new data over the coming weeks. 

“Is it going to become the dominant variant? The second issue is to see does this variance cause more severe illness, and there’s no evidence that is so," El-Sadr said. "The third issue is to study and see if this new variant is less vulnerable to our vaccines.”