As new laboratory studies have shown that the omicron subvariant BA.2 can cause severe disease like delta and the previously unrecognized COVID variant, epidemiologist Eric Fang voices that it needs to be upgraded to a variant of concern .
There are three important things about the subvariant ba, 2, also known as stealth omicron, that the Japanese team has identified – ba.2 may have characteristics that enable it to cause severe disease. , it shows the same immunity-avoiding properties as the sub-variant. BA.1. Also stealth Omicron is resistant to treatments such as sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody. The study has been posted to the preprint repository BioRxiv, however, it has yet to be reviewed.
The researchers said that although BA.2 is considered to be an Omicron variant, its genomic sequence is very different from that of BA.1. “And, this suggests that the virological characteristics of BA.2 are different from those of BA.1,” he said.
Describing this as worrying, Fang appealed that with the Omicron BA2 growing globally, it needed to be upgraded to VOC. He explains more about the subvariant in a series of tweets.
What the epidemiologist said on Omicron BA.2
BA2 is seriously bad news. This is both a faster transmission than BA2 and if it is indeed more severe and BA1 is against prior immunity including chronic Omicron immunity – it will be worse than in 4 worlds, he said in a tweet.
They also reported that being infected with BA.1 produces immunity against the subvariant, but not BA.2.
Fang also said that studies have shown that there are only two versions of BA.2.
See all tweets here:
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization also warned that BA.2 is growing faster than a previously identified strain. And if there is one more omicron wave, we can see more transitions of BA.2.
Although the subvariant is more transmissible than BA.1, WHO officials said their severity did not differ much.
Echoing similar views, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. “There is no evidence that the BA.2 lineage is more severe than the BA.1 lineage,” Rochelle Valensky is quoted by CNN. However, they are keeping a close eye on B.A.2.
omicron not light
The WHO has repeatedly warned that Omicron is not mild. “It’s less severe than Delta’s but we’re still seeing a significant number of Omicron’s hospitalizations.”
The WHO also reported that all other coronavirus cases, including alpha, beta and delta, continue to decline globally as Omicron knocks them out. Of the more than 400,000 COVID-19 virus sequences uploaded to the world’s largest virus database last week, more than 98% were omicrons.
Meanwhile, subvariant BA.2 appears to be “continuously increasing” and its prevalence has increased in South Africa, Denmark, the UK and other countries.
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