Rise of the BQ.1.1.37 SARS-CoV-2 Sublineage, Italy

Daniele Focosi; Pietro Giorgio Spezia; Anna-Lisa Capria; Federico Gueli; Scott McConnell; Federica Novazzi; Mauro Pistello

doi:10.3390/diagnostics13051000

Rise of the BQ.1.1.37 SARS-CoV-2 Sublineage, Italy

Diagnostics (Basel). 2023 Mar 6;13(5):1000. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics13051000.

Authors

Daniele Focosi¹, Pietro Giorgio Spezia², Anna-Lisa Capria², Federico Gueli³, Scott McConnell⁴, Federica Novazzi⁵, Mauro Pistello^{2

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Affiliations

¹ North-Western Tuscany Blood Bank, Pisa University Hospital, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
² Division of Virology, Pisa University Hospital, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
³ Independent Researcher, 2210 Como, Italy.
⁴ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
⁵ Laboratory of Microbiology, ASST Sette Laghi, 21100 Varese, Italy.
⁶ Retrovirus Center and Virology Section, Department of Translational Research, University of Pisa, 56100 Pisa, Italy.

Abstract

BQ.1.1 has dominated the Europe and Americas COVID-19 wave across the 2022-2023 winter, and further viral evolution is expected to escape the consolidating immune responses. We report here the emergence of the BQ.1.1.37 variant in Italy, peaking in January 2022 before suffering competition by XBB.1.*. We attempted to correlate the potential fitness of BQ.1.1.37 with a unique two-amino acid insertion within the Spike protein.

Keywords: BQ.1.1.37; COVID-19; Cerberus; Italy; SARS-CoV-2.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by bando Ricerca Salute 2018 “Tuscany Antiviral Research Network (TUSCAVIR.NET)”; bando PRIN: Progetti di ricerca di rilevante interesse nazionale, Bando 2020, Prot. 2020KSY3KL: “DissectINg the complex network of virus-cell Host interactions controlling virAL replication and inflammatory response to identify novel host-targeted Approaches against severe respiratory virus infections (INHALA)”.