Thailand Ministry of Health reports 16,462 new COVID-19 cases and an additional 27 deaths since yesterday. The ministry also announced an additional 10,868 recovered patients.
BA.2 subvariant of Covid-19’s Omicron variant accounted for 18.5% of Omicron cases for the past week. The Department of Medical Sciences examined the lineages of the samples. Director-general Supakit Sirilak reported that they found 18.5% were of the BA.2 subvariant. These are from 567 Omicron cases obtained from Feb 5 to 11.
“There are some signs that BA.2 spreads faster than BA.1 looking at cases in other countries but there has not been any significant difference from BA.1 when it comes to severity and vaccine avoidance,” he said.
BA.2 has been detected in 57 countries and is likely to replace BA.1 in India, Denmark, and Sweden. It has already superseded BA.1 in Denmark. BA.2 was first recorded in Thailand among visitors early this year.
Omicron is already a dominant variant of Covid-19 worldwide and booster vaccine shots could prevent infection, severe illness, and fatalities caused by BA.2 according to overseas papers.
Bangkok had the largest number of accumulated Omicron infections with 6,641 cases including 2,132 local infections, followed by 1,286 cases in Phuket, 1,240 in Chon Buri, 670 cases in Roi Et, 590 in Samut Prakan, 534 in Nong Khai, 511 in Surat Thani, 508 in Maha Sarakham, 419 in Kalasin and 410 in Khon Kaen.