Who Found New Covid-19 Subvariant Omicron In India

The World Health Organization's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reported the discovery of a new sub-variant BA.2.75 of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in various countries, including India.

According to Ghebreyesus, the world body is monitoring the situation.

Ghebreyesus told reporters on Wednesday that COVID-19 cases have increased nearly 30 percent globally in the last two weeks. Four out of six WHO sub-regions saw cases increase in the last week.

WHO chief said that BA.4 and BA.5 are driving waves in Europe and America, but a new sub-lineage of BA.2.75 has also been detected in India.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 16,159 new COVID cases were reported in India in the last 24 hours.

Since the onset of the pandemic in the country, there have been 4,29,07,327 recoveries from COVID, according to the Health Ministry. Currently, 98.53 percent of the patients are recovering.

At yesterday's briefing, WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said there has been an emergence of a new subtype called BA.2.75. India was the first to report it, followed by about 10 other countries.

The sub-variant is still too young to know if it has properties of immune evasion or indeed of being more clinically severe. We don't know that yet," the Chief Scientist said. He noted that only limited sequences are available of this sub-variant to analyze, but the sub-variant seems to have a few mutations on the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein.

As a result, we have to wait and see," she said, adding the WHO is keeping a close eye on the data, and its Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) is always monitoring data from around the world.

The WHO's COVID-19 Incident Manager Abdi Mahamud said that the pandemic has not ended yet.

He noted that we are still in the midst of the pandemic, and the virus has a lot of energy left. So whether it's the BA.4 or BA.5 or BA.2.75, this virus will continue to do what it's meant to do." he added.

Furthermore, he emphasized the importance of wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and protecting the most vulnerable and high-risk populations.

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