Omicron subvariant found to be more detectable, not as severe: WHO

BA.2 variant, a descendant of the infamous Omicron variant has recently seen light of day and according to scientists around the world it is considered “more detectable” because of higher chances of transmission.

WHO’s technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove conveys there is no proof to know if this variant is more severe as compared to the original omicron variant. Since November, more than 3 dozen countries have gone on to upload close to 15,000 genetic sequences of BA.2 to GISAID.

Omicron is known to have 3 main substrains, namely BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3, as per the WHO. More commonly, BA.1 has been dominating the majority of the numbers of the Omicron variant around the globe. However, in some places around the world, the BA.2 has picked up its speed.

Earlier, INSACOG stated that a sub-variant of BA.2 has covered a considerably big part of India as a whole.

“BA.2 lineage is a substantial fraction in India and S-gene dropout-based screening is thus likely to give high false negatives. Tests suitable for PCR-based screening applicable to all Omicron lineages have been approved for use,” said the genomics consortium.

Just last week, the WHO stated that 90 million covid cases have been reported since the identification of the Omicron variant, which is more number of cases than all of 2020. Given the fact that many countries have been easing out on their restrictions regarding the pandemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyeus conveys to governments around the world that there is no reason for omicron to be underestimated as much as it has been.

“We are concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that because of vaccines – and because of omicron’s high transmissibility and lower severity – preventing transmission is no longer possible and no longer necessary,” he stated during a routine WHO briefing.