What is Omicron Stealth BA.2?

More transmissible than Omicron native variant

You may remember my Covid-19 writings from the Last Futurist. Well it seems you have found me.

This new variant of Omicron BA.2 sometimes called Omicron Stealth is spreading in Denmark, the U.K., Singapore and India and appears to be out-competing Omicron native variant.

The Omicron subvariant BA.2, nicknamed the “stealth Omicron,” appears to be outpacing other substrains of Omicron in some regions of the world, raising fears that the even more transmissible version of Omicron could spark larger COVID-19 waves globally. This is likely to be the case in the Fall of 2022.

• The World Health Organization (WHO) says that Omicron, which is also referred to as B.1.1.529, has three main substrains: BA.1, BA.2, and BA.3.

• On Thursday January 20th, 2022 a Thursday, Denmark reported that the BA.2 substrain of Omicron accounts for almost half of the country’s cases and is quickly displacing BA.1, the original Omicron strain.

Just as governments across Europe have voiced their intentions to ease COVID-19-related restrictions, the spectre of another wave of the virus is sparking concern among the scientific community.

Omicron subvariant BA.2, which is being dubbed with the moniker "Stealth Omicron," appears to be gaining ground in certain parts of the world, including Denmark and the UK.

As restrictions are lifted from what for many countries is Wave 5 of Omicron, Omicron 2.0 (BA.2) is likely to spread and make hospitals the cramped places they are in the Winter of 2022 already.

While there are multiple calls for us to “live with the pandemic”, from a healthcare perspective Omicron is already so transmissible it’s making regular healthcare like surgeries delayed. In many parts of the world, it’s also filling up ICUs and even closing them due to labor shortages.

It’s not yet clear if BA-2 is more severe, but there are some early signs it is more contagious than Omicron BA.1.

Denmark is one of the best places in the world for this kind of data. BA.2 has gone from accounting for 20% of Denmark’s COVID-19 infections to making up 45%. That’s a troubling concern for the rest of the world.

Over that same period, Denmark's COVID infections have shot to record highs. Denmark is recording over 30,000 new cases per day this week, 10 times more cases than peaks in previous waves.

Stealth Omicron on the Rise

BA-2 is also likely to be India’s Third Wave, and peak sometime between the first and second week of February, 2022.

The BA-2 is thought to be on the rise in:

• Denmark

• Sweden

• Singapore

• India

• And the UK (it has recently been detected in the Philippines as well).

What this suggests, is that it is out-competing Omicron BA.1 and could indeed be more contagious. This Stealth variant sister version of Omicron is said to be capable of another Omicron wave according to some of the leading Scientists involved. The split between the sisters appears to have occurred several months ago.

BA.2 is now thought to be in 49 countries and 17 US states, according to the Scripps University’s Outbreak info. This is from the database of GISAID, so is very credible. Still few countries appear to have over 100 cases of BA.2 so far.

The variant as of January 21st has been labelled a “variant under investigation” by the U.K. Omicron already has a lot more mutations than Delta, along with a staggeringly different patient experience. Luckily it proved to be less lethal, but greatly more contagious.

• A Moroccan researcher says that BA.2 belongs to the same lineage as the omicron variant but has 30 more mutations than the original version. Several of these mutations are on the spike protein, the part of the virus that acts as a key to get into human cells and is the target for some antibodies. 

• Stealth for a reason: The original omicron variant was more easily detected from PCR tests because probable cases could be flagged when a specific piece of genetic code was missing. BA.2 is “stealthy” in that probable cases can’t get picked up in routine PCR tests and need to be sequenced completely. 

In the saga that is Covid-19, it’s quickly clear that it will be around for a while as variant quickly scale.

BA.2 was first identified in India and South Africa in late December 2021. It is a sub-variant, believed to have emerged from a mutation of Omicron (officially known as BA.1). Omicron itself was born from a mutation of Delta.

The stealth variant has many mutations in common with standard Omicron, but it lacks a particular genetic change that allows lab-based PCR tests to be used as a rough and ready means of flagging up probable cases. That is pretty ninja.

BA.2 is being closely studied by the scientific community, but there is as yet no precise data on its resistance to vaccines or the severity of the cases of Covid-19 it causes. Scientists are beginning to speak out on the subject, while remaining cautious.

Thanks for reading!