Omicron variant of Covid-19 expands throughout Spain

The Omicron variant is considered more contagious than the previous ones, although with less lethality, according to the WHO.

The Spanish Ministry of Health reported this Tuesday that the Omicron variant of Covid-19 maintains a high incidence of infections with the disease, in a range between 79.6 and 98.7 percent of all diagnoses.

With a total of more than 90 million cases and nearly 92,000 deaths, an acceleration has been noted since last November in the so-called sixth wave, according to health authorities.

In the last week of December 2021, Ómicron accounted for 61.6 percent of the random samples sequenced in 14 of the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain, which shows a considerable increase since then, if the most recent data is taken into account .

Despite the fact that Ómicron is known for its low lethality compared to other variants, the most recent statistics show that 253 new deaths from Covid-19 and 305,432 new infections were registered in Spain.

So far, the health authorities have indicated that Ómicron has a greater immune escape from anticovid vaccines and greater transmissibility. However, they emphasize that studies have highlighted that the percentage of protection is high against serious infection in convalescent and vaccinated people.

The Ministry of Health indicated, in its report of the last hours, that at the moment no cases have been detected in Spain of the BA.2 subvariant of Ómicron, identified in central Europe.

The BA.2 subvariant does not have the characteristic mutation in the S gene that allows the original Ómicron variant to be detected in a PCR test, making it more difficult to distinguish from other variants in routine tests.

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