A new COVID-19 sub-variant of Omicron has been identified in Poland, according to Polish Deputy Health Minister Waldemar Kraska on Monday.
On Monday, Poland’s Deputy Minister of Health Waldemar Kraska announced the discovery of two new “sub-variants” of the Omicron strain of COVID-19 in Poland, but he also stated that it is still unclear how these strains will be handled going forward.
In the BA.2 sub-variant of the coronavirus Omicron, Danish researchers have discovered a new and more contagious mutation in a spike protein that increases its contagiousness.
The H78Y mutation, according to the researchers, is part of the ORF3a protein, which promotes inflammatory processes in cells and speeds up virus transmission from human to human.
According to them, the new sub-variant of the BA.2 is responsible for around 24% of all coronavirus infections in Denmark. The BA.2 variant is known as the “stealth Omicron” since it is difficult to detect with some PCR assays.
The researchers also stated that they will continue to monitor the H78Y mutation, not ruling out the possibility that other BA.2 sub-variants will appear in the near future.
Their findings come after Polish Deputy Minister of Health Waldemar Kraska informed TVN24 that the Omicron strain of COVID-19 now has “two new sub-variants” in Poland, indicating that “the coronavirus will stay with us for a long time” and “will not leave our everyday life so easily.”
Meanwhile, the BA.2 strain has been found in at least 47 countries, with rising cases in India, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, and Sweden.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has classified BA.2 as a “variant under investigation,” while Denmark’s Health Ministry has already documented more than 50,000 cases in recent weeks.
The BA.2, which was first discovered in South Africa in November 2021, is expected to have over 30 mutations, with nearly half of them being part of the spike protein, which interacts with human cells and is crucial to the coronavirus’s entry into the body.
Source: 10.1002/jmv.27659
Image Credit: Getty
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