Recently, the emergence of the Omicron BA.2 subvariant in a number of countries around the world has caused concern again. Director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr Rochelle Walensky said until now experts did not know how dangerous this variant, called the “stealth” Omicron, was.
“In terms of initial studies, we haven’t seen any studies that show it (BA.2) is more severe,” said Dr Walensky, quoted from Fox News, Friday (4/2/2022).
“We also haven’t seen any studies showing that it will evade our vaccine any more than Omicron has and in fact, our vaccine will work, just as it did with Omicron,” he continued.
Dr Walensky revealed that currently 99.9 percent of new COVID-19 cases in the United States (US) are Omicron variants. In addition, it is predicted that 1.5 percent of cases in the US are of the BA.2 variant. He also highlighted the BA.2 variant has advantages in terms of transmission compared to BA.1.
“In anticipating this will have an impact on Corona cases in a country, we have seen this BA.2 continue to decline albeit slowly,” said Walensky.
This Omicron subvariance has genetic traits that make it more difficult to detect. Even so, there are still many things that are not known about this BA.2 variant.
Previously, the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that the BA.2 variant had spread to dozens of countries in the world. This makes the existence of this variant to be considered.
“By January 24, 2022, the BA.2 lineage, which differs from BA.1 in several mutations in the including spike protein, increased in many countries. Investigation of BA.2 characteristics, including its immune release and virulence, should be prioritized independently (and relatively ) to BA.1,” said WHO.
Watch Videos “Findings About Omicron Variants That Need Attention“
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