Stealth Omicron: These days China is facing the hardest hit of Corona in the last two years. On Monday, 1,337 (COVID-19) cases were registered in China.
This is because of a rapidly spreading variant known as the Stealth Omicron. Stealth means cunning or secret. This variant is very difficult to detect, hence it has been given this name.
Outbreaks of this Stealth Omicron are being seen in cities from Shenzhen in China to Qingdao and Xingtai in the north. The number of patients affected by it is increasing rapidly since the beginning of March.
Even though the figures are lower than in Europe or the US, or the city of Hong Kong, the central city of Wuhan has the highest since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
China has seen very few infections since the strict lockdown in the city of Wuhan due to the government's zero-tolerance policy, which focuses on stopping the transmission of the coronavirus as quickly as possible.
It emphasized strict lockdown and mandatory quarantine for those who came in contact with positive people.
This sub-variant of Corona is also called BA.2 variant. This sub-variant is different from the original variant. This sub-variant is more worrying because it is so difficult to detect.
This sub-variant is missing a critical key mutation in the spike protein. Due to this key mutation, rapid PCR tests can be done to identify corona infection.
Preliminary research suggests that it spreads faster than the original omicron, which itself spreads faster than the original virus and other variants.
According to a study led by a Danish researcher, the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron spreads 1.5 times faster than the original Omicron strain.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the three main substrains of Omicron, also known as B.1.1.529, are BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3. Sub-variant BA.2, may prove to be as dangerous as the original variant of the coronavirus.
According to a Danish study, people who have had a full vaccination with a booster shot are less likely to be infected than other people.