The Omicron variant, which led the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, is slowing down across the world. Many countries are removing the strict restrictions put in place to check the spread of the infection. But, a World health Organization (WHO) official has raised a fresh concern related to an Omicron sub-strain.
“The virus is evolving and Omicron has several sub-lineages that we are tracking. We have BA.1, BA.1.1, BA.2 and BA.3. It's really quite incredible how Omicron, the latest variant of concern has overtaken Delta around the world,” Maria Van Kerkhove, Covid-19 technical lead at the WHO, said at a briefing on Thursday. The video was posted on Twitter by the WHO.
“Most of the sequences are this sub-lineage BA.1. We are also seeing an increasing in proportion of sequences of BA.2,” she added. In the tweet accompanying the video, the WHO said that almost 75,000 deaths from Covid-19 were reported last week.
Expressing concern about one sub-lineage, the WHO official said that “BA.2 is more transmissible” than the others.
Kerkhove said there is no evidence that BA.2 is more lethal than BA.1 "but we are monitoring".
Finally, the WHO official said that Omicron is not mild but less severe than Delta. “We are still seeing significant numbers of hospitaliations of Omicron. We are seeing significant numbers of deaths. It is not the common cold, it is not influenza. We just have to be really careful right now,” said Kerkhove.
In an accompanying tweet, the WHO said that almost 75,000 deaths from Covid-19 were reported to it last week.
BA.2 now accounts for roughly one in five new Omicron cases recorded across the world, according to the WHO.
In a briefing on Tuesday, the WHO said that a new wave of infections from the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is moving towards the east of Europe, urging authorities to improve vaccination and other measures.
Over the past two weeks, cases of Covid-19 have more than doubled in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine, WHO's Europe regional director Hans Kluge said in a statement.
