An IMA official said on Tuesday that the Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 will certainly not lead to another COVID surge, but we need to be cautious. However, the official further cautioned that the bigger concern now is whether a completely new variant will emerge from a different branch of the genomic tree.
What are Omicron BA.4 and BA.5?
BA.4 and BA.5 Dr Jayadevan, co-chair of the Indian Medical Association’s national task force, told the news agency that they are not new viruses, but a sub-lineage of the Omicron version of the COVID-19 infection. ANI,
“Basically, Omicron took off from a branch of the genomic tree and these are smaller branches of Omicron so they are not new viruses. We know this virus is able to evade our immunity and travel rapidly between people. continuously adapting to the human host.”
Could Omicron Subvariants Cause Another COVID Surge?
Omicron flew at a very high rate to many countries including India. And, the experience of South Africa assures us that these two sub-lineages are not going to cause large-scale problems if we are careful enough. “Ba.4 and BA.5 led to a spike in cases a couple of weeks ago, but they came down quickly. They didn’t go up as high as Omicron did back in November, December of last year,” he said.
Therefore, it seems to be a sub-version of omicron (BA.4 and BA.5) are not going to cause a rise in cases, still, we need to be cautious, he said.
The concern lies elsewhere…
Noting that the Omicron variant has already run its course, the expert pointed out that the concern now remains whether a completely new variant will emerge from a different genomic tree.
“We’re more concerned about this, will anyone be perfect? new version Coming from a completely different branch of the genomic tree? And that’s a concern for us because now Omicron has run its course for about six, seven months from November.”
“We should go for sequencing anything new, anything unusual, unusual clusters,” he cautioned.
BA.4 and BA.5 are subtypes of the Omicron version that circulates globally. These were first reported from South Africa earlier this year and are now reported from several other countries. These variants are not associated with disease severity or hospitalization.
The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) on Sunday confirmed that the first case of BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has been detected in Tamil Nadu and Telangana respectively.
(with inputs from agencies)