In Bashkiria, a subspecies of "omicron" VA.2 was identified

In Bashkiria, Moscow, Mari El and the Rostov region, cases of the disease with a subspecies of "omicron" BA.2 were detected. This was announced by the chief sanitary DOCTOR of RUSSIA Anna Popova at a meeting of the coordinating council under the government to combat covid-19 on Wednesday, February 2.

The HEAD of Rospotrebnadzor noted that over the past six weeks, the number of cases of the “omicron” disease in the world has increased by almost 30 times, which indicates the high contagiousness (infectiousness) of this variant of the virus. In Russia, according to the latest data, 15.28 thousand cases of “omicron” were detected, of which 70% of those who fell ill were not vaccinated against CORONAVIRUS, 95% never had COVID-19. Popova stressed that an important part of the work of the department is the study of the strain composition of COVID-19.

“As of today, 80,875 genomic sequences have been loaded into the Russian database, the national VGARus database. Of these, 8239 downloaded are the omicron genovariant. To date, 253 sequences belong to the BA.2 lineage, which is 3%; the BA.3 lineage has not been identified on the territory of the Russian Federation. The vast majority, which belongs to the BA.2 line, was allocated in the city of Moscow, the Republic of Mari El, the Rostov Region, the Republic of Bashkortostan, ”said the Chief Sanitary Doctor of Russia.

Popova stressed that a number of countries are talking about an even higher infectiousness of this “omicron” line. it has already become dominant in Denmark.

In the country as a whole, the incidence of coronavirus has doubled in the last week of January. 45% of new cases were in Moscow, the Moscow region and St. Petersburg. The excess of the average Russian incidence was recorded in 19 regions, only in two the indicators are declining - in the Amur Region and the Jewish Autonomous Region. At the same time, the number of infected people is growing in all age groups, at the slowest rate among the elderly, and at the highest rate among adolescents from 15 to 17 years old.