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The UK Health Safety Agency is keeping an eye on the subtype of Ómicron. The reason? This new strain (BA.2,) has already reached many countries, including Portugal, and is even more contagious than the original.
According to the Financial Times, “the number of BA.2 series recognized nationally and internationally is increasing” and everything points to the fact that it may have an “increased growth rate” with the previous form Ómicron (BA.1). The public health system in the UK is reason enough to want to explore this strain in depth.
In Portugal, the BA.2 lineage was detected in the country in November 2021, according to Ricardo Jorge, of the National Institutes of Health.
Denmark has already begun to study this new strain and the initial results of their research indicate a more pervasiveness. In that country, the mutation was first seen in the second week of December. “In Denmark, with this BA.2, There seems to be a significant increase in the number of cases It was argued last week that it could be more contagious than Omigran, cited by Miguel Prudencio, a researcher at the Institute of Molecular Medicine. CNN. Despite this, he felt the results were not yet “sufficient”.
In the second week of December, BA.2 accounted for 2.3% of the cases analyzed, rising to 44.8% in the second week of January. Of the 1,458 cases listed, 653 belonged to that sub-category.
