CANBERRA: An Australian senior health official has said that a new COVID-19 sub-variant circulating in Australia is not yet causing concern among health experts.
Michael Kidd, deputy chief medical officer of Australia, on Monday said the Omicron BA.2 sub-variant, which was detected in Australia in December, may become the dominant sub-variant of Omicron based on some reports. He said they were not seeing more severe disease associated with this sub-variant, and “it’s also too early to tell” if there is any significant different impact on the effectiveness of the vaccines against this sub-variant.
“If this BA.2 sub-variant is shown to have more distinct clinical characteristics then the World Health Organization may determine, that it becomes a variant of its own, but it is too early to speculate on that, and we’re not seeing indications of that at the moment,” Kidd told reporters in Canberra.
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