WHO: BA.5 already accounts for 43% of global Omicron sequence

The latest report sent to the media by the World Health Organization (WHO) on June 30 (Vietnam time) shows that the number of Covid-19 cases has skyrocketed in the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, Southeast Asia, parallel to the invasion of the sub-variant BA.5.

According to WHO, the number of global weekly cases increased for the third consecutive week, following a downward trend since the last peak in March 2022. In the week of June 20-26, 2022, more than 4.1 million new cases were reported, an increase of 18% from the previous week. The number of new weekly deaths remains similar to the previous week, with more than 8,500 deaths reported.

Map of global incidence on population, the darker the color, the higher the rate – Photo: WHO

At the WHO regional level, weekly new cases increased in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (+47%), the European Region (+33%), the Southeast Asia Region (+32%, WHO Southeast Asia does not include Vietnam) and the Americas Region (+14%).

Meanwhile, the number of cases decreased sharply in the Africa Region (-39%). In the Western Pacific region with Vietnam, the number of cases decreased slightly (-3%), but 12 countries and territories reported an increase in the number of cases, most notably Samoa (+361%), French Polynesia (+70%) and the Philippines (+60%).

The biggest increase in new weekly deaths was in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (+22%), an area previously warned by WHO experts to have low vaccination rates.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference – Photo: WHO

“These trends need to be interpreted with caution as a number of countries have been gradually changing their Covid-19 testing strategies, resulting in a lower overall number of tests performed and thus a lower number of cases detected,” the WHO report noted.

The new monthly statistics on the rates of strains and sub-variants also clearly show the strong “encroachment” of BA.5, becoming the most common strain of SARS-CoV-2 globally.

From May 27 to June 27, 2021, 146,183 SARS-CoV-2 gene sequences were submitted to WHO from around the world, showing that Omicron remains the dominant strain, accounting for 94% of the sequences. Among those Omicron sequences, which were collected from June 13 to 19, the coated strain BA.2 accounted for 25%, BA.2.12.1 accounted for 11%, BA.4 accounted for 12% and BA.5 accounted for 43. %.

@ Cafef