Omicron Sub-Variant BA.2 No More Severe Than First Strain: South African Study

The rapidly spreading omicron BA.2 subvariant doesn’t cause significantly more severe disease than the original version, according to a South African study that appears to allay fears it causes harsher illness. Patients infected with the new subvariant suffered from similar rates of severe disease and hospitalization as those with the original omicron strain, according to researchers from the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases that analyzed data from a large hospital group and the government laboratory service, looking at almost 100,000 cases. The emergence of BA.2 has caused widespread concern as it appears to be even more transmissible than the original omicron strain that was first identified in South Africa and has since spread around the world, leading to waves of infections in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. The study indicates that, like the original version, BA.2 is relatively mild in comparison with earlier dominant strains, such as delta.