BA.2 is still growing in domiance here and in 49 other countries worldwide
BA.2, the newly detected version of Omicron, is not a cause for alarm, scientists say
My colleague Melissa Davey reported earlier Australia has recorded its deadliest day ever of the Covid pandemic, as the first cases of the BA.2 descendant of the Omicron variant were recorded in New South Wales.
What is BA.2? Is it something to be worried about?
Denmark, India, UK and northern Europe have recorded the most cases of BA.2, a descendant of Omicron. While it looks to be outcompeting the original Omicron strain, particularly in Denmark, there is no evidence of increased severity.
A report released on Thursday by the UK ’s Health Security Agency offers some reassurance, suggesting that current vaccines protect against BA.2 just as well as they do against the original Omicron variant, with better protection against symptoms — an average of about 70% – two weeks after a booster.
CNN reports:
Experts say there’s no reason to panic over BA.2, which was first detected mid-November and has since spread to 49 countries including the United States.
“Among all the lineages of Omicron, this is the one showing a higher increase of cases. But we have to be careful in interpreting that, because higher increases from a very low number are easier to observe,” said Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo , assistant professor of medicine for infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago .
Like the more familiar version of Omicron, BA.2 has a large number of changes – about 20 – concentrated in the spike protein, the part of the virus that’s targeted by vaccines.
Unlike Omicron, however, it doesn’t cause a certain signature on lab tests called an s-gene target failure, meaning it can look like other SARS-CoV-2 variants on a first screen. That has some calling it ‘the stealth variant’.
But Lorenzo-Redondo says that nickname has caused people to think that it can’t be detected in lab tests, which isn’t the case.
“There has been confusing messaging about this subject. Both FDA-approved lab-based and at-home tests should detect this lineage, as well as the other Omicron (sublineage), BA.1,” he said.
In Denmark , BA.2 now accounts for about half of all new Covid-19 cases, according to a recent statement from Denmark ’s Statens Serum Institute.On Thursday, Dr Sujeet Kumar Singh , director of India ’s National Centre for Disease Control, said that BA.2 had become the dominant strain there.