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Rabat – Tayeb Hamdi, a Moroccan doctor and researcher in health policies and systems, has said that according to the available data, Omicron BA.2 subvariant requires more vigilance than concern.
In an analysis titled “The BA.2 subvariant: the pandemic is not behind us,” Hamdi underlined that the BA.2 subvariant is not a new variant per se, but “a subvariant of the same Omicron lineage.”
Commenting on the fast spreading sub-strain, he stressed that the BA.2 subvariant belongs to the same lineage but has about thirty mutations more than the “original” omicron.
The new subvariant also includes a dozen on the Spike protein, a protein that interacts with human cells and is the key to the virus entering the body.
Hamdi further emphasized that the scientific community suspects BA.2 to be more transmissible than Omicron.
BA.2 was first detected in China on December 31 on a man who was returning from India and is now present in more than 40 countries.
The highly transmissible subvariant is believed to originate from India and is now very widespread in Denmark. Hamdi argued that its severity would be similar to Omicron’s.
The subvariant is also believed to have emerged from a mutation of Omicron, which itself was born from a mutation of Delta.
Other sub-lineages of the COVID-19 virus have already been identified, such as BA.3 or BB.2, but they have attracted less attention from epidemiologists due to the significant increase in cases of people who have contracted BA.2.
In his analysis, Hamdi highlighted the effectiveness of screening tests against BA.2 infections, however, the subvariant cannot be identified through the PCR screening.
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