The Netherlands announced on Wednesday that it had in turn detected a case of contamination with the BA.2.75 subvariant of Omicron, while experts expressed concerns regarding the rapid spread of the strain.
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The subvariant, dubbed “centaur”, was first reported in India in May, and has since spread to around a dozen other countries including the US, UK, Germany and Australia.
It has “now also been identified in the Netherlands,” the Netherlands Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) said in a statement.
“Little is known regarding BA.2.75,” RIVM clarified, but it “also appears to be able to more easily circumvent the built-up defense once morest the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus through specific small changes.”
World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said last week that the organization is closely tracking the strain, but there was “limited footage to analyze”.
She indicated in a video shared on Twitter that the subvariant appears to have some “mutations on the receptor binding domain of the spike protein…so we need to watch that.”
She added that it was “too early to know” how well the strain can evade immunity or how serious it was.
Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, told AFP that the spread of BA.2.75 in India indicated that it might be more transmissible than the BA.5 subvariant, which brings a rise in contamination in Europe and the United States.
“It seems to be becoming the dominant strain in India – the question is whether it will become the dominant strain anywhere in the world,” he added.
Flahault added that previous dominant strains, like Delta, first dominated the country in which they emerged before spreading across the world.
The expert, however, pointed out that there is a “margin of unpredictability”, explaining that BA.2.12.1 was recently dominant in the United States, but that BA.5 “succeeded” when the two entered competition direct.
Flahault added that successive variants have made it more difficult to develop a vaccine to combat them, because by the time a serum targeting them really needs to be rolled out, new strains have taken over.
It was far too early to know the severity of BA.2.75, he added.
The sample from the Netherlands was taken on June 26, 2022 in the province of Gelderland (north-west), said the RIVM, which “is closely monitoring the situation”.
BA.2.75 was listed on July 7 by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) as a “variant under surveillance”.
