Researchers are monitoring the behavior of BA.2, a subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 that is responsible for a number of outbreaks ongoing in Europe and some parts of Asia. First described in November, the strain is a subtype of the Omicron variant, and preliminary data hint that it might spread slightly faster than the better-studied BA.1, the subtype responsible for most Omicron outbreaks to date.
“Among all the lineages of Omicron, this is the one showing a higher increase of cases,” Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, assistant professor of medicine for infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, tells CNN. “But we have to be careful in interpreting that, because higher increases from a very low number are easier to observe.”
The BA.1 version of Omicron has been the dominant strain in many countries for weeks, and nearly all Omicron infections in the US at the moment are due to this ...
