Rishard Khan
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The more trans­mis­si­ble Omi­cron sub­lin­eage BA.2 dubbed "Stealth Omi­cron", ap­pears to be in­creas­ing its pres­ence lo­cal­ly.

Cov-spec­trum.org, which presents se­quenc­ing da­ta sub­mit­ted to GI­SAID, shows an in­creas­ing pres­ence of the sub­vari­ant in sub­mis­sions start­ing from Jan­u­ary 28. The in­crease made a sharp up­ward tra­jec­to­ry be­gin­ning on March 5. At the start of this spike, it ac­count­ed for 21.2 per cent of se­quences sub­mit­ted be­tween March 5 and 11. Since March 31, it has ac­count­ed for 100 per cent of sub­mit­ted se­quences.

This in­for­ma­tion needs to be tak­en with cau­tion as it does not re­flect all the se­quences con­duct­ed at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. While se­quences are sub­mit­ted to GI­SAID, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands on­ly some 70 per cent of se­quences done by the lab go to the site.

How­ev­er, while it may not rep­re­sent all of the da­ta gath­ered there is mer­it in the de­vel­op­ment as in­di­cat­ed by the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram, on April 13. Though his fig­ures var­ied, they came from a re­port from the uni­ver­si­ty and in­di­cat­ed an in­creas­ing trend.

"Based on last week's re­port, it ac­count­ed for 39 per cent of the sam­ples that were Omi­cron that were BA.2. So it is go­ing up in terms of per­cent­age of Omi­cron," he said.

To date, the Omi­cron vari­ant is the most trans­mis­si­ble when com­pared to pre­vi­ous strains. How­ev­er, the BA.2 Stealth Omi­cron lin­eage is more trans­mis­si­ble than the orig­i­nal BA.1 as con­firmed by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion in Feb­ru­ary. It does not ap­pear to cre­ate more se­vere ill­ness or death and is com­par­a­tive­ly less so than its pre­de­ces­sor, Delta.

The sub­vari­ant is now be­lieved to be the dom­i­nant strain glob­al­ly, ac­count­ing for around half of the week­ly in­fec­tions in the Unit­ed States and dri­ving a new wave of in­fec­tions in Chi­na.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get a com­ment from Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh on the mat­ter. No re­sponse was re­ceived.