The Centre for Medical Genomics at the Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital of Mahidol University has warned of possible outbreaks of four new sub-variants of the Omicron strain around the end of this year.
The centre posted on its Facebook page yesterday that scientists and virologists from 210 countries and territories have contributed millions of Sars-CoV-2 genomes to Gisaid, the world’s Covid-19 database, since the start of Covid-19 in January 2020.
Recently, it found that four new Omicron sub-variants, BQ.1.1, BA.2.3.20, BA.2.75.2 and XBB, might replace the present domination of the Omicron BA.5 sub-variant by either the end of this year or early next year.
The four new sub-variants are descendants of earlier forms of Omicron sub-variants including BA.2 and BA.5 and mutated from more than 100 positions of their ancestral Wuhan strain.
The centre stated that it is also possible to predict which new Omicron strains will take over from BA.5, which is known as one of the most infectious viruses today, in each continent.
In North America, the Omicron sub-variant BQ.1.1 is expected to dominate followed by BA.2.3.20, while in Europe it will be BQ.1.1 that will replace BA.5.
In Asia, the XBB will dominate infections while in Australia and New Zealand the BQ.1.1 and XBB sub-variants will spread faster than BA.5 in the future.
However, it is feared XBB may spearhead a new wave of Covid-19 infections as it is a combination of both the BJ.1 and BA.2.75 variants, which themselves are mutated from the Omicron BA.2 variant, which itself is about 50% more contagious than BA.1.
The centre is advising people to maintain the strict hygiene and disease control measures they adopted at the height of the pandemic.