Six more patients of BA.5 and three of BA.4 sub-variant of Omicron were detected in Pune, as per the latest report from the B.J. Medical, Pune on Wednesday. Besdies, 10 cases of BA.2.75 were also found in the city.
According to the health bulletin, all these samples were collected during the 21st June to 29th June 2022. All these cases are asymptomatic and recovered in home isolation, it added.
What is BA.2.75?
BA.2.75 is a recently identified second generation subvariant of BA.2.
However, the highly transmissible strain of Omicron's BA.2 sub-variant BA.2.75 has been documented to have a limited circulation in India, official sources said on Tuesday, underlining that this lineage has so far not been recorded to have enhanced severity or the spread of the disease.
Currently, the predominant circulating variant of concern of SARS-CoV-2 is Omicron VoC and globally, the BA.2 Omicron lineage has been seen to replace the BA.1 lineage, the sources said.
In India, BA.2.75 has been documented to have a limited circulation and so far, this lineage has not been documented to have enhanced severity or the spread of the disease.
As the BA.2 lineage is evolving, many of its sub-lineages are now developing with a set of distinct mutations. B.2.75 is a similar sub-lineage of BA.2.
The sources also said it is critical to continue to monitor the spread of this sub-lineage and also the other emerging sub-lineages of Omicron. The scale of genomic sequencing needs to be expanded and maintained for an early detection of the variant strains of SARS-CoV-2.
BA.2.75 -- the second generation of the BA.2 variants -- has high transmissibility and is being said to be behind the recent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
(With inputs from PTI)
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