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New omicron subtype BA.2 already in Germany - virologist Ciesek on transmissibility and severity of the disease

2022-01-26T14:16:05.983Z


New omicron subtype BA.2 already in Germany - virologist Ciesek on transmissibility and severity of the disease Created: 01/26/2022, 15:01 Sandra Ciesek, Director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital in Frankfurt and Professor of Medical Virology at the Goethe University. © Sebastian Gollnow/dpa The new omicron subtype BA.2 apparently has a further mix of properties.


New omicron subtype BA.2 already in Germany - virologist Ciesek on transmissibility and severity of the disease

Created: 01/26/2022, 15:01

Sandra Ciesek, Director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital in Frankfurt and Professor of Medical Virology at the Goethe University.

© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa

The new omicron subtype BA.2 apparently has a further mix of properties.

Virologist Sandra Ciesek on transmissibility and the severity of the disease.

Berlin - that's just what we were missing - some will probably think.

First delta, then omicron, and now a new omicron subtype called BA.2.

The new coronavirus sub-variant is already spreading in some countries.

Omikron BA.2 should possibly be even easier to transfer.

The BA.2 subtype is already circulating in Germany.

According to a current random sample by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the proportion is still low compared to the "normal" omicron variant.

Omikron BA.1 still dominates in this country.

That can change rapidly.

Many questions are still open.

Why is the proportion of BA.2 increasing in some countries?

Virologist Ciesek suspects an advantage

“Because it can be observed in various countries that the proportion of BA.2 is increasing, it is assumed that BA.2 has an advantage in terms of transferability compared to BA.1,” said the Frankfurt virologist Sandra Ciesek when asked by the dpa news agency.

In addition to higher transmissibility, a stronger immune escape could also lead to more and more people becoming infected with BA.2, explained Ciesek.

The omicron subtype BA.2 could escape the antibodies of vaccinated and recovered people better and also be more contagious.

It is initially unclear whether the properties of the omicron subtypes differ.

The Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in Denmark has identified many mutational differences in important areas in BA.1 and BA.2.

"In fact, the difference between BA.1 and BA.2 is larger than the difference between the original variant and the Alpha variant," the SSI recently announced.

It has not yet been finally clarified whether the two subtypes have different properties, for example in terms of infectivity, vaccination effect and disease severity.

However, it is expected that vaccines will also work against severe diseases in BA.2.

Omikron BA.2: Disease severity "doesn't seem to make a big difference"

"Very early observations from Denmark suggest that there doesn't seem to be a big difference in the severity of the disease between BA.1 and BA.2," says virologist Ciesek, director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the Frankfurt University Hospital.

The state health institute SSI announced on January 19 that there is no difference in admission risk in BA.2 compared to BA.1.

BA.2 is now responsible for around half of all cases in the country.

The number of infections is extremely high.

Nevertheless, Denmark plans to abolish all corona measures.

According to the latest weekly report by the RKI, BA.1 was detected 1568 times in a sample in the first week of January in Germany.

BA.2 appeared 38 times.

(ml with dpa material)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-01-26

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