The Omicron subvariant generally known as BA.2, or unofficially as "stealth Omicron," has now been discovered within the overwhelming majority of U.S. states, knowledge exhibits.
The subvariant has made headlines this yr after being behind an more and more excessive proportion of instances in international locations equivalent to Denmark—the place most new COVID instances are actually BA.2—and the U.Ok.
The variant has additionally been discovered to a lesser extent within the U.S., the place in response to the variant monitoring instrument Outbreak.information as of Monday, it had been reported in 47 states. Outbreak.information makes use of knowledge submitted to the virus genome database GISAID.
Regardless of BA.2 being discovered broadly throughout the U.S., it would not seem to account for a lot of instances. Outbreak.information exhibits it has been present in simply 790 sequenced instances, whereas Omicron as a complete has accounted for greater than 370,000 within the nation.
Knowledge from the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Monday that BA.2 accounted for 3.6 % of all COVID instances within the nation between January 30 and February 5, with different Omicron subtypes accounting for the remaining 96.4 %.
Knowledge from some international locations has proven that BA.2 has a sooner development charge in comparison with the BA.1 Omicron subtype, which has been accountable for most Omicron instances. Nevertheless, different elements of the variant are but to be conclusively decided.
Dr. Troels Lillebaek, chairman of the Danish SARS-CoV-2 Variant Evaluation Committee, instructed Newsweek final week that up to now, no distinction in hospitalization threat has been present in BA.2 in comparison with BA.1, primarily based on restricted knowledge.
As well as, vaccines seem to work as nicely in opposition to BA.2 as they do in opposition to BA.1, in response to knowledge from the U.Ok.'s Well being Safety Company (HSA) that was revealed in a technical briefing on February 11. It said that sera—blood, basically—from individuals with current booster photographs was in a position to neutralize each variants equally. It is unclear if it will change over time.
Reinfection Threat
One of the vital vital unknowns about BA.2 is whether or not it could actually reinfect individuals who have already caught BA.1, which means individuals may probably catch COVID twice in simply a few months.
The HSA evaluated this for its February 11 report and located that there was "no detected sequence-confirmed BA.2 reinfection following a BA.1 an infection at any interval up to now in England."
The identical query was introduced up in a World Well being Group (WHO) question-and-answer session final Tuesday, and Dr. Abdi Mahamud, the group's incident supervisor, mentioned the reply was unclear.
"Proper now the principle query [is] if I acquired BA.1, can I get BA.2… we do not know. We've not had time," Mahamud mentioned. "For WHO, we use 90 days between the 2 infections, so we're nonetheless simply beginning the interval."
BA.2 could also be referred to by some as "stealth Omicron" because it exhibits up otherwise on COVID exams than the present dominant Omicron kind.
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