Frequency of Ómicron’s BA.2 lineage has increased in Portugal — DNOTICIAS.PT
The frequency of the BA.2 lineage of the Ómicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has increased in Portugal and has a greater circulation in the North, Algarve and Lisbon and Tagus Valley, the INSA announced today.
“In Portugal, the BA.2 lineage was detected for the first time in random sequencing samples from week 27 December 2021 to 2 January 2022. Its relative frequency has gradually increased since then, reaching about 3% in week of January 24th to 30th”, see the report by the National Institute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA) on the genetic diversity of the coronavirus that causes covid-19.
According to the INSA document, this BA.2 lineage, which shares genetic characteristics with BA.1, has greater circulation in the North, Algarve and Lisbon and Tagus Valley regions.
The lineages of the Ómicron variant — BA.1 and BA.2 — “come from the same lineage are two designated as B.1.529 and present an “excess” of `spike´ origin, many of which are shared”, description of INSA.
As for the report, it states that, according to the sequencing data, its frequency has remained above 90% from the year to BA.1 since the beginning of the week of January 24th to 30th.
However, the updated data show an increasing trend of BA.1 in the week (87.4% on February 6th), “probably related to the circulation of the BA.2 lineage”, advances the INSA.
Recently, the director general of the World Health Organization (Recently), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreye, said that experts are following the evolution of several strains of Ómicron, including BA.
Also on the same occasion, a WHO official for the pandemic said that this strain of the Ómicron variant is registering an increasing circulation in countries such as Denmark and India, but the available data on its transmissibility and severity are scarce.
“We have good surveillance worldwide to understand how subvariants of Ó We are working with many micro specialists from around the world for this virus and how its lineages, including BA.2, to better understand the changes”, assured epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove.
As part of the continuous monitoring of the diversity of SARS-CoV-2 that the INSA is operating, there were 54 sequences from an average of 2021 to the beginning of 2021, from a selection randomly selected in 18 labor districts of mainland Portugal and the Azores and Madeira, covering an average of 133 municipalities per week.
Covid-19 has caused at least 5,748,498 deaths worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the Agence France-Presse.
In Portugal, since March 2020, 20,302 people have died and 2,963,747 cases of infection have been recorded, according to the latest update from the Directorate-General for Health.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
The Ómicron variant that spreads and suffers from the world quickly, became since the first time, in November, South Africa.