GENEVA | Omicron’s BA.2 subvariant — which is spreading rapidly in Denmark in particular — does not “cause a more severe form” of COVID than the BA.1 variant that is circulating widely around the world, a health care official said on Tuesday. WHO.
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“We don’t see a difference in terms of severity between BA.1 compared to BA.2 and so it’s a similar level of severity in terms of risks of hospitalization,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, who heads up the fight against COVID-19 at WHO, during a Q&A on social media.
This finding “is really important, because in many countries there was a substantial amount of circulation of both BA.1 and BA.2.”
She thus reported the conclusions drawn on Monday by an Advisory Committee of experts on the evolution of the virus which gives COVID-19. Reassuring and long-awaited conclusions after the concerns caused by the prepublication – therefore not peer-reviewed – of a study on hamsters which seemed to show that, on the contrary, BA.2 inflicted more serious forms.
The researchers behind the study presented their findings to the committee, Ms.me Van Kerkhove.
She took the opportunity to call on countries around the world not to dismantle their sequencing devices in parallel with the lifting of health restrictions in many countries.