New Variant BA.2 Detected in Israel

Just as Israeli health officials were cautiously predicting an omicron exit, the new BA.2 COVID-19 variant has arrived.

Some 297 cases of BA.2 have been detected in Israel, primarily among people returning from abroad, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of public health services at the Health Ministry, said on Wednesday at a meeting of the Knesset Health Committee.

However, she dismissed reports on Channel 12 and the Kan public broadcaster that said there there were several cases of people being reinfected with BA.2 strain after recovering from the Omicron variant.

“There was not one case of reinfection among those who have recovered from Omicron,” Alroy-Preis said.

“For someone who has recently recovered, contracting a relatively similar virus” is unlikely, as the new strain “needs to be different enough that the antibodies that helped him recover would not protect him,” she explained, adding that “at this point we don’t know of such a case.”

The available data on BA.2 indicates that it may be as much as 1.5 times more contagious than the Omicron variant, designated BA.1, according to Statens Serum Institut, Denmark’s infectious disease surveillance body.