Omicron Subtype Variant BA.2 Is Spreading Rapidly Around The World, What Do We Know Now?

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On Wednesday, local time, a piece of news that "South African researchers said that the new variant of Omicron may induce a second increase in the number of confirmed cases" was widely spread, which also caused the outside world to focus on the newly introduced BA.2 variant again.

It should be noted that although there are some preliminary studies showing that the BA.2 variant is more infectious than the original Omicron, almost all scientists who talk about this strain emphasize that it is still necessary to draw conclusions. More solid laboratory data support.

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South African scientists: worried about the second rise of the epidemic curve

Tulio de Oliveira, a professor of bioinformatics at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, said in a public presentation on Wednesday that the Omikron BA.2 strain is currently spreading rapidly in South Africa, which may cause the Omikron epidemic to enter the second round of climbing. Expect.

Professor Tulio vividly calls this hypothesis the "hump curve", which means that another wave of the epidemic may usher in after the current round of epidemic subsides. During Wednesday's presentation, Prof Tulio said the BA.2 variant had already seen significant spread in seven of South Africa's nine provinces, with Limpopo becoming the dominant strain and Gauteng, the most populous province. is also close to achieving this goal.

The researchers also said that patients who were mildly infected with a different variant of Omicron were likely not able to mount an adequate immune response to prevent infection with another Omicron virus.

As a top South African researcher, Professor Tulio de Oliveira is also involved in research activities to detect beta variants in the country in late 2020.

It should be noted that, according to the latest epidemic data, the number of newly confirmed cases in South Africa is currently close to 3,000 in a single day, which is far from the peak of nearly 30,000 cases in December last year. Therefore, Professor Tulio's pessimistic expectations still need to wait for the actual data. evidence.

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The three Omicron sisters: BA.2 shows "cunning" characteristics

The virus does not mutate all the time, and the same is true for the new coronavirus. The new mutant strain that can trigger the perception of the outside world is bound to need some breakthroughs.

According to WHO data, as of January 25 this year, 98.8% of the cases in the Global Initiative for Sharing Influenza Data (GISAID) public virus tracking database are still Omicron BA.1 virus, except for the BA mentioned above. In addition to .2, BA.1.1.529 and BA.3 are listed under the Omicron subtype variant category.

The WHO also confirmed this week that 57 countries have uploaded sequences of the BA.2 variant in GISAID, and in some countries, the variant already accounts for more than half of all Omicron infections.

For example, the data reported by the Nordic country Denmark on January 21 showed that the BA.2 variant accounted for nearly 65% of the newly confirmed cases in the country. At the same time, according to the data of Bijaya Dhakal, a molecular biologist at the Sonic Reference Laboratory in the United States, the BA.2 variant is likely to have become the dominant variant in India.

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Compared with the original Omicron virus, there are 40 mutations in the BA.2 subtype, which also makes the transmission characteristics of the two different.

(In fact, the difference between BA.1 and BA.2 is quite big, source: Science)

According to the UK Health Security Agency, in areas of the country where sufficient data can be collected, BA.2 has shown higher transmissibility than BA.1, with the proportion of BA.2 transmission between households from late December to early January (13.4%) was also slightly higher than the other Omicron mutants (10.3%).

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The Danish study data is even more obvious: if there is a BA.1 infected person in the family member, then the family member has an average probability of 29% to be infected, but in the case of BA.2, this number increases to 39%.

Also according to the Danish study, the BA.2 variant may have a stronger ability to escape the vaccine. For the population who had completed the booster vaccination, the escape ability of BA.2 was three times higher than that of BA.1, and for the population who had not received the booster or were not vaccinated at all, the multiplication rate was 2.5 times and 2.2 times, respectively. The good news, however, is that preliminary studies in the UK show that for people who have been vaccinated with a booster shot, infection with BA.1 and BA.2 after infection with BA.1 and BA.2 prevent the development of symptomatic infection.

Although it may be more contagious, there is currently no data to suggest that BA.2 infection may cause more severe pathogenicity. This is why Denmark continued to lift almost all epidemic prevention and control measures on February 1.

In addition to being more contagious, some properties of BA.2 also make it more difficult to track. According to Anna Ssentongo, an assistant professor at the Pennsylvania State University School of Medicine, unlike BA.1, BA.2 does not have a deletion in the gene segment at loci 69-70, which means that in the absence of gene sequencing, PCR detection alone May confuse BA.2 with other strains.

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