The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday reported a steady increase in infections and a significant drop in the number of coronavirus cases worldwide due to the ba.2 subvariant of the omicron variant.

BA.2 was responsible for more than a fifth of Omicron cases analyzed worldwide in early February, according to the United Nations’ World Health Agency. The same source said that this subvariant is gaining momentum in both countries that are seeing an increase and those seeing a decline in omicron numbers.

“Since the designation of B.1.1.1.529 (Omicron) as COV on November 26, 2021, multiple lineages have been identified”, underlines the Geneva-based organization, then Pango BA.1, BA. 1.1 gives the details of the BA pedigree. 2 and BA.3, all of which are monitored by the WHO as Omicron.

As of 14 February, about ten countries have reported a predominance of BA.2 (>50%). These are Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, China, Denmark, Guam, India, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines.

However, differences are observed between regions, with the Southeast Asia region reporting the highest prevalence of BA.2 among Omicron sequences (44.7%) and the Americas region reporting the lowest (1%). , According to WHO, this analysis is based on samples collected and collected from January 13 to February 11, 2022.

As examples of countries experiencing an increase in the prevalence of BA.2, the WHO cites the case of South Africa, where the prevalence increased from 27% on February 4 to 86% on February 11, 2022. In the United Kingdom too, the prevalence increased six-fold (from 2.2% to 12%) between 17 and 31 January 2022.

According to WHO, the United States has reported a tripling of the prevalence from 1.2% in the week ended January 29, 2022 to 3.6% during the week ended February 5, 2022.

Broadly speaking, the current global epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 is characterized by the global dominance of the Omicron variant. All other variants, including COV (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) and VOI (lambda and mu), continue to decline in all six WHO regions.

Of the 432,470 sequences collected during the last 30 days, 425,227 (98.3%) were of the omicron type. The delta continues to decline with 1.7% (7,191).

Preliminary data from limited studies suggest that BA.2 is 30% more communicable than BA.1. Furthermore, analysis of the data shows a growth rate advantage of BA.2 over BA.1 in 43 countries, with sufficient data on sequences and co-circulation of the two lineages.

Currently, the WHO says it has little data on the severity of BA.2 compared to BA.1 or other Omicron subvariants. While the proportion of BA.2s in the UK has steadily increased in recent weeks, the WHO has observed a steady decline in the number of hospitalizations and deaths.

However, hospitalizations have decreased in the United States and deaths have increased for weeks in a row. In this context, there has been a decrease of about 6% in the number of new deaths during the week ended February 8, 2022 as compared to the previous week.

According to the latest data released by the WHO on Wednesday, more than 412.3 lakh cases have been confirmed worldwide. The novel coronavirus pandemic has claimed at least 5,821,004 lives worldwide since the onset of the disease in late December 2020. And as of February 14, 2022, more than 10.2 billion doses of the vaccine have been given worldwide.