Omicron's BA.5 sub-variant has entered Vietnam
(Baonghean.vn) - The leader of the Department of Preventive Medicine (Ministry of Health) commented that this variant can overwhelm the old strains of SARS-CoV-2.
At the meeting to provide medical information on the afternoon of June 27, Prof. Dr. Phan Trong Lan - Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine,Ministry of Health, said that recently, Vietnam's key surveillance system, especially institutes, hospitals, and departments, regularly collect samples and sequence genes.
"Thereby, we have recorded that Vietnam has had the invasion of the BA.5 variant of Omicron," Mr. Lan confirmed.
According to him, when a new variant enters the world, we will face the risk of it overwhelming the old variant. However, this is inevitable when people interact and travel in the new normal context.
Professor Lan affirmed that the Ministry of Health will continue to proactively monitor the new variant, thereby implementing appropriate response measures.
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| Prof. Dr. Phan Trong Lan - Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health said that the BA.5 sub-variant of Omicron has entered Vietnam, possibly overwhelming the old BA.2 sub-variant that is dominant in our country. |
Also at the meeting, Professor Phan Trong Lan said that through some initial small-scale assessments, the BA.4 and BA.5 variants have the ability to spread faster than the previous BA.1 and BA.2.
Regarding the ability of this new variant to cause severe illness, world medicine currently has no specific evidence. However, some unpublished studies also show that they cause more severe symptoms.
"However, to get a more complete picture of this variant, we still need more systematic research," the leader emphasized.
Worldwide, WHO has also initially recorded that the BA.4 and BA.5 variants have appeared in many countries in Europe and America.
About the situationCovid-19 epidemicCurrently, Professor Lan said, although the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths globally is on the decline, in some areas, the epidemic is still complicated, with new strains appearing.
"Worldwide, the number of Covid-19 cases increased by 8% and deaths decreased by 3%. However, many countries are concerned about new outbreaks in the summer. The number of Covid-19 cases worldwide is also not stable, sometimes increasing, sometimes decreasing, and unevenly between regions," he said.
Present at the meeting, a representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) also stated that the world is still in a pandemic. At the same time, WHO warned that the new strain could complicate the epidemic and increase again. Therefore, countries still need to continue to maintain response measures such as vaccination, key surveillance, etc.
"This intrusion is inevitable because countries in Europe and the US have also recorded it. With the current travel and communication, this is normal. The Ministry of Health continues to monitor to adjust anti-epidemic measures safely and effectively," emphasized Prof. Dr. Phan Trong Lan.
The Ministry of Health recommends that people, especially those at risk, need to get vaccinated on schedule and receive enough doses of the recommended Covid-19 booster vaccine to boost immunity against new variants of the disease.
What is the BA.5 variant?
Just weeks after the BA.2 subtype sparked a global surge in new cases, two other Omicron subtypes continued to spread to dozens of countries. These were the two variants discovered by experts in South Africa in January, which are more transmissible than BA.2. Then, in early April, they appeared in the US and gradually became the dominant cause of new cases.
But so far, according to Nature, both BA.4 and BA.5 appear to cause fewer deaths and hospitalizations, a sign that growing human immunity is helping to overcome the immediate effects of the surge in Covid-19 cases.
BA.4 and BA.5 carry their own unique mutations, with changes in the L452R, F486V mutations on the spike protein. This helps the virus attach to host cells faster, easier, and may even modulate some immune responses.
A study in May found that BA.4 and BA.5 share a common ancestor with earlier Omicron strains. However, another unpublished analysis suggests that they are two offshoots of BA.2. The work was conducted by evolutionary geneticists Bette Korber and William Fischer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Drs Korber and Fischer also found that many genome sequences classified as BA.2 in public databases were actually BA.4 or BA.5. As a result, researchers may be underestimating the continued proliferation of variants, as well as the diversity of mutations they produce.
