Russia (bbabo.net), - There are cases of infection with the more contagious line BA.2 of the "omicron" strain of coronavirus in Moscow, the republics of Mari El and Bashkiria, as well as in the Rostov region. This was announced by the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova.
"As of today, 80,875 genomic sequences have been uploaded to the Russian national database, of which 8,239 uploaded are the omicron genovariant," Popova said at a meeting of the Presidium of the Coordinating Council for Combating COVID-19.
According to her, Rospotrebnadzor is closely monitoring the further development of the situation and the mutations within this variant.
"To date, 253 sequences belong to the BA.2 lineage, which is 3%, and the BA.3 lineage has not been identified in the territory of the Russian Federation," Anna Popova continued.
The vast majority of cases that belong to BA.2 were identified in Moscow, Mari El, Rostov region, Bashkiria. “I am focusing on this, because a number of countries speak of an even higher contagiousness of this line,” the chief sanitary doctor explained.
Variant B.1.1.529, named "omicron", discovered at the end of November 2021 in southern Africa. Due to its high spread rate, it has caused a new wave of infections in Europe and North America. According to the operational headquarters, the Omicron strain has already been found in 83 regions of Russia.
The BA.2 mutation was discovered in mid-January by an academic laboratory in Uppsala. According to the Danish Serum Institute, the BA.2 subspecies is significantly more contagious than the BA.1 strain, while genetically BA.2 differs from BA.1 more than BA.1 from the first variant "alpha", which does not allow it to be identified as "omicron" using a standard PCR test.
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