AR
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Countries in Asia and Europe are witnessing a surge in COVID-19 infections in the wake of increasing dominance of BA.2 - a sub-variant of the highly transmissible Omicron version of Coronavirus. Concerns are rising over the potential for a new wave in the United States due to increasing infections.
Here is everything about BA.2 variant of Coronavirus:
Highly transmissible
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), BA.2 is currently representing nearly 86 percent of all sequenced cases. As per reports, it is more transmissible than its highly contagious Omicron siblings, BA.1 and BA.1.1. However, ongoing research suggests that it is no more likely to cause severe disease.
Similarly to the other variants in the Omicron family, vaccines are proving to be less effective against BA.2 as compared to previous variants such as Alpha or the original strain of Coronavirus. At the same time, protection from the vaccine is likely to decline over time. Meanwhile, the UK Health Security Agency data has stated that protection is expected to be restored by a booster vaccine dose, particularly to prevent hospitalisation and death due to COVID-19.
Global situation
BA.2 is resulting in the ongoing surge in new infections in China and record cases in several European countries including Germany and the UK.
It is being considered a "stealth variant" due to its ability to be harder to track. Interestingly, a missing gene in BA.1 helped in tracking the new variant by default through a common PCR test.
BA.2 and BA.3 variants of Coronavirus are showing increasing prevalence across the world, but they are at low levels. These variants can only be found by genomic sequencing.
Re-infections
Experts have expressed a key concern related to BA.2 if it could re-infect people who had already been infected with BA.1. This concern is emerging in view of increasing number of countries experiencing "double peaks" in infection rates.
However, data from both the UK and Denmark have indicated that while Omicron variant can reinfect people who were previously infected with other variants including Delta, only a handful of BA.2 reinfections was found among people who had BA.1 in tens of thousands of cases.
According to scientists, a possible explanation for the recent rise in BA.2 could be a result of simultaneous removal of public health restrictions in many countries.
"In some ways, it could just be that BA.2 was the variant that was circulating when all these people stopped wearing masks," said Dr Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
Other US experts including Eric Topol, director of California's Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, underlined that it was "a little too early" to call BA.2 wave "significant" in the United States.
Scientists have noted that BA.2's rise is a reminder that Coronavirus continues to cause harm to people, particularly among unvaccinated, under-vaccinated and vulnerable groups.
"It is still a huge public health problem and it is going to continue to be," added Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh.
SOURCE: Khaleej Times