By JAMEY KEAT­EN, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GENE­VA (AP) — Ad­vis­ers to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion are hold­ing a spe­cial ses­sion Fri­day to flesh out in­for­ma­tion about a wor­ry­ing new vari­ant of the coro­n­avirus that has emerged in South Africa, though a top ex­pert says its im­pact on COVID-19 vac­cines may not be known for weeks.

The tech­ni­cal ad­vi­so­ry group on the evo­lu­tion of COVID-19 was meet­ing vir­tu­al­ly to dis­cuss the so-called B.1.1.529 vari­ant that has caused stock mar­kets to swoon and led the Eu­ro­pean Union to rec­om­mend a pause in flights to south­ern Africa.

The group could de­cide if it’s a “vari­ant of con­cern” — the most wor­ry­ing type, like the well-known delta vari­ant — or a “vari­ant of in­ter­est,” and whether to use a Greek let­ter to clas­si­fy it.

“We don’t know very much about this, yet. What we do know is that this vari­ant has a large num­ber of mu­ta­tions, and the con­cern is that when you have so many mu­ta­tions it can have an im­pact on how the virus be­haves,” said Maria Van Kerk­hove, WHO’s tech­ni­cal lead on COVID-19, in a so­cial-me­dia chat Thurs­day.

Few­er than 100 full genome se­quences of the vari­ant are so far avail­able, she said.

“It will take a few weeks for us to un­der­stand what im­pact this vari­ant has on any po­ten­tial vac­cines, for ex­am­ple,” Van Kerk­hove said.

Reached by phone, ad­vi­so­ry group chair­man Dr. Anurag Agraw­al, the di­rec­tor of In­sti­tute of Ge­nomics and In­te­gra­tive Bi­ol­o­gy in New Del­hi, said it was too soon to com­ment on the vari­ant. He said that more da­ta was need­ed be­fore he could add to the in­for­ma­tion that was al­ready avail­able.

“This is one to watch. I would say we have con­cern, but I think you would want us to have con­cern,” Van Kerk­hove said. “We have peo­ple who are on this.”

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Anirud­dha Ghos­al con­tributed to this re­port from New Del­hi.