Jordan News

Professor of Clinical Pharmacotherapy at the University of Petra Dr. Dirar Balawi said that a new Japanese study revealed that “the sub-mutant of omicron, called cryptic omicron BA.2, not only spreads and multiplies faster, but may cause more pathogenic disease compared to omicron, and it appears It is able to undo some of the key tools used to combat COVID-19.”

And Balawi added in a post on his Facebook page, Friday, “The new laboratory experiments conducted in Japan showed that BA.2 may have properties that make it capable of causing severe disease, similar to the previous mutant of Covid-19, and including the delta mutant.”

He continued, “Like Omicron, BA.2 appears to largely elude the immunity conferred by vaccines. However, the booster dose still restores protection, reducing the risk of disease after infection by 74%. BA.2 is also resistant to some types of therapies, such as sotrovimab, the currently used monoclonal antibody against Omicron.”

In his publication, Balawi noted several information:

Message 1: A pandemic may break in countries, but it will remain as epidemic pockets in other countries. Therefore, do not blindly “copy and paste” the procedures that are issued in some countries!

Message 2: Basic precautionary measures, such as: masks, vaccinations, and the examination of unvaccinated people should not be canceled.

Message 3: Random tests / genome sequencing must be done to be in control of the mutations present in our country, not to be the ones controlling our epidemiological situation and surprising us!”.