Know About 'Stealth Omicron', COVID Variant That Triggered China's Biggest Outbreak In 2 Years

China has decided to ban most of its citizens from leaving a COVID-hit northeastern province and mobilised military reservists on March 14 amid the quick-spreading "stealth omicron" variant that fuels the nation's biggest outbreak since the start of the global pandemic in 2020.

As per recent reports, most of the latest COVID outbreak in China is caused by the variant commonly known as "stealth omicron" or the B.A.2 lineage of the Omicron variant.

The UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) revealed that it is currently studying a sub-lineage of the omicron coronavirus variant—known as BA.2 and named by some scientists as "stealth omicron".

According to early analysis, the "stealth omicron" variant has been reported to spread quicker than the original Omicron, which itself spreads much quicker than the original virus and other variants. The Omicron COVID variant had been the catalyst for triggering the third pandemic wave that affected the world.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is still yet to consider BA.2 a "variant of concern"; however, it continues to monitor its spread. BA.2 is slowly replacing the original Omicron COVID strain in numerous nations across the globe.

Omicron, Stealth Omicron & Other COVID Variants

According to reports, it is now the dominant variant in Denmark, which recorded more than 50,000 new infections in just one day last week. BA.2 also appears to be the major Omicron lineage in parts of India and the Philippines. It has already caused about 250 cases in the United States and has been identified in more than half the states, reported Mint.

The BA.2 subvariant presumably stemmed from a common ancestor during the exact time as the original Omicron, also known as BA.1, so it is not a descendent but a sibling, stated Cornelius Römer, a bioinformatician at Switzerland's Biozentrum of the University of Basel.

The BA.2 variant has been occasionally called a stealth variant due to it missing fundamental mutations in its spike protein that are essential for rapid PCR tests to distinguish it from previous variants, such as the Delta variant. This other difference might also be why BA.2 evaded attention earlier.

The two Omicron lineages have evolutionary divergences from one another than the distinctions between the original coronavirus and its Alpha variant, the very first variant of concern.

"BA.2 shares over 30 mutations with BA.1, but it also has 28 unique mutations," evolutionary geneticist and advisor to the Central Virology Laboratory in Israel, Shay Fleishon, said.

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