The coronavirus mutant widely known as “stealth omicron' is now causing more than a third of new omicron cases around the world. Here's what we know about the strain and how it could affect the future of the pandemic.
, the WHO said BA.2 was dominant in 18 countries and it represented about 36% of sequenced omicron cases submitted in the most recent week to a publicly available international database where scientists share coronavirus data. That’s up from 19% two weeks earlier.
But vaccines can protect people from getting sick. Scientists in the United Kingdom found that they provide the same level of protection from both types of omicron. But scientists are finding something different when they look at people. An initial analysis in Denmark showed no differences in hospitalizations for BA.2 compared with the original omicron, which tends to generally cause milder disease than the delta variant. More recently, researchers in South Africa: a similar risk of hospitalization and severe disease with the original omicron variant and BA.2.
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