Preben Aavitsland, the chief physician in the infection control division at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), believes the new and more contagious omicron variant BA.2 will lead to a larger wave of infection this winter.
“We believe the sub-variant BA.2 will cause this winter wave to be larger. All omicron variants are good at circumventing previous immunity; that is why the omicron variant became dominant,” chief physician Preben Aavitsland at the FHI wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper Dagbladet.
BA.2 is a more contagious subvariant of the original omicron variant BA.1. The variant has mainly been detected in Oslo.
In Denmark and Sweden, BA.2 is also spreading, but so far, no change in vaccine effect or more serious illness has been reported in the face of the variant.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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