“We don’t see a difference in terms of severity between BA.1 compared to BA.2,” explained a WHO official.
Omicron’s BA.2 sub-variant – which is spreading rapidly in Denmark in particular – does not “cause a more serious form” of Covid than the BA.1 variant which circulates widely in the world, said Tuesday Maria Van Kerkhovewho oversees the fight against Covid-19 at the WHO, during a question and answer session on social networks.
“We don’t see a difference in severity between BA.1 compared to BA.2 and so it’s a similar level of severity in terms of risk of hospitalization,” she said. This finding “is really important, because in many countries there was a substantial amount of circulation of both BA.1 and BA.2”.
Reassuring conclusions
She thus reported the conclusions drawn on Monday by an Advisory Committee of experts on the evolution of the virus which gives Covid. Reassuring and long-awaited conclusions after the concerns caused by the pre-publication – therefore not controlled by peers – of a study on hamsters which seemed to show that on the contrary BA.2 inflicted more serious forms.
The researchers behind this study presented their results to the committee, said Maria Van Kerkhove.
She also called on countries around the world not to dismantle their sequencing devices alongside the lifting of health restrictions in many countries.
Nevertheless in a press release, the WHO points out that BA.2 “should continue to be considered a variant of concern”, particularly because of its high contagiousness.
“We are not seeing a recovery with BA.2”
Another piece of good news – although Dr van Kerkhove insists it’s still too early to draw firm conclusions – concerns reinfections.
“While we see a drop in cases (infections) in countries we do not see a recovery with BA.2”, she notes. “It’s important and it’s something we’re watching very closely,” she said.
In France, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran explained to the Senate on Tuesday that BA.2 today represents half of the contaminations in France, adding that with current scientific knowledge, “we consider that there is no no risk that there will be an epidemic rebound of BA.2”.
“At the moment there seems to be significant protection between BA.1 and BA2 and vice versa,” said Dr. Anurag Agrawal, member of the WHO Advisory Committee. This means that if you have been infected with Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 you are protected at least for a period of 6 to 8 weeks. No older data are available, the BA.2 sub-variant having appeared only recently.
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