The World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday that they are looking into a few dozen cases of the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of the highly infectious Omicron strain.
They are tracking the infections to see if they are more dangerous or infectious, and they have been added to the list of sub-variants for monitoring, which already includes BA.1, BA.2, BA.3, and BA.1.1.
WHO explained that they are tracking the sub-variants due to their additional mutations, in order to understand their impact on immune escape potential.
It is normal for viruses to mutate but only some mutations affect the virus’ capability to spread or escape immunity from vaccinations and/or infections.
Take BA.2 for example, it makes up about 94% of all sequenced cases and is more infectious than its sibling variants, but it is not more likely to cause serious illnesses.
As per WHO, so far, there have only been a few dozen cases of the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants being reported to the GISAID database.
BA.4 was found in South Africa, Denmark, Scotland, England, and Botswana between 10 January to 30 March.
While BA.5 was found in South Africa, 4 others were found in Botswana.