Moreover, the samples which confirmed the BA.4 lineage were collected in late May...

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Moreover, the samples which confirmed the BA.4 lineage were collected in late May.

Digital Desk: A more contagious sub-variant of the COVID-19 Omicron strain has been reported in Russia, a senior official at the national consumer health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said.

While talking to the media the head of genome research at Rospotrebnadzor's Central Research Institute for Epidemiology, Kamil Khafizov said that two national labs had submitted the viral genome of the BA.4 sublineage to the VGARus database.

Moreover, the samples which confirmed the BA.4 lineage were collected in late May.

As per the scientist, the BA.2 subtype accounted for 95 percent of all new cases in Russia.

"A number of recent researches have shown that the BA.4 and BA.5 variants of Omicron are a little bit more transmissible than the early forms of Omicron," he said.

Although the BA.2 subvariant remains dominant around the world, the World Health Organization's director-general cautioned in May that Omicron sublineages BA.4 and BA.5 were causing a surge of the disease in unvaccinated countries.

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