A new Omicron subvariant BA.5.2.1 has been Identified in China on Friday amid a surge in COVID cases, said a city health official.
Speaking to the press on Sunday, Zhao Dandan, vice head of health commission, said that the case was found in Shanghai's Pudong district.
Shanghai had just emerged from a stringent two month long lockdown in June, but a resurgence in local transmissions has prompted authorities to double down on strict restrictions.
"Our city has recently continued to report more locally transmitted positive cases (of COVID-19) and the risk of the epidemic spreading through society remains very high," Zhao Dandan, vice head of Shanghai's health commission, said in a press statement on Sunday.
BA.5.2.1 Omicron Subvariant: What do we know?
BA.5.2.1 is a sublineage of the Omicron strain BA.5 which was first identified in Botswana and South Africa in November 2021, but has since fast spread all over the world.
BA.5 has become the dominat COVID variant in the US in a matter of weeks since it was detected in the country.
The China Center for Disease Prevention and Control recorded the first case of BA.5 in China in May in a man who had flown to Shanghai from Uganda.
Since then cases of COVID have been on the rise in the country even as the country continues to pursue its 'Zero COVID' policy.
The health authorities in China have not released any additional information about the subvariant except that it has been identified.
However, Yuan Zhengan, a member of Shanghai's expert advisory group on COVID prevention, said at the press briefing on Sunday that the BA.5 subvariant has been shown to be more transmissible and capable of circumventing past immune protection, reported Reuters.
This means prior infections and vaccines may not necessarily protect against infections from the BA.5 subvariant.
He also added that vaccines are still effective at preventing serious illness or death from the new subvaraints that have been identified so far, including BA.5.
Other Subvariants to Watch Out For
As COVID cases continue on their upward trend, experts have been keeping a close eye on emerging variants and subvariants, looking out for signs of the situation worsening in the near future.
Apart from BA.5, other subvariants of Omicron that have been flagged by health authorities include BA.2, BA.4, and BA.2.75.
The world health organisation (WHO) on 6 July, acknowledged the Omicron subvariant dubbed BA.2.75, saying "there is still limited sequences available to analyse, but this variant seems to have some mutations on the receptor binding domain of the spike protein...we have to watch that."
(Written with inputs from Reuters.)
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