Omicron subvariant BA.2 has infected 14 people in Thailand, one of whom has died, the director-general of the Department of Medical Sciences said on Wednesday (Jan 26).

Due to the difficulty in comparing Omicron BA.2 to the Delta version by the polymerase chain reaction method, it has been dubbed the “stealth variant.”

BA.2 is rapidly expanding in more than 40 countries, including Singapore, India, Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

“The Omicron variant that has been found in Thailand since Dec 6 last year is the BA.1 variant that has mutations in the K417N, T478K, N501Y and del69/70 positions from the original Covid-19 virus,” said Dr. Supphakit.

“About three weeks after it was first discovered among foreign travellers, the BA.1 variant has spread quickly throughout a number of countries, with several clusters reported in populated and tourism areas,” he added.

“The Omicron BA.2 subvariant was first found in Thailand on Jan 2. Since then, 14 patients have been reported to have contracted it,” said the expert, adding, that Omicron BA.3 “has yet to be discovered in Thailand”.

According to Dr. Supphakit, there was no evidence that BA.2 differed from BA.1 in terms of transmissibility, the likelihood of a patient developing severe symptoms, or the ability to circumvent immunity acquired after recovering from Covid-19 or receiving a vaccine.

“Apart from being hard to differentiate from Delta variants with (reverse transcription PCR) testing, the BA.2 subvariant is different from BA.1 and BA.3, meaning that it does not show any mutation in the positions 69-70 of the spike protein,” he added.

Seven people infected with the Omicron strain have died in Thailand thus far, increasing the country’s fatality rate for Omicron to 0.1 percent. In Thailand, Omicron is now the most common variant, accounting for 94.6 percent of cases. The Delta variant is responsible for 5.4 percent of the total.

The Omicron variant makes up nearly all imported cases, with Delta accounting for the remaining 0.6 percent. The Omicron variant accounts for 92.3 percent of instances in the United States, while the Delta variant accounts for 7.7 percent.

Image Credit: Getty

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