Russia Reports Cases of Most Contagious Covid-19 Delta Subvariant

Russia on Thursday reported “isolated cases” of Covid-19 with a subvariant of the Delta strain that is believed to be even more contagious.

Researcher Kamil Khafizov said that the AY.4.2 subvariant may be 10% more infectious than Delta, which has led to Russia report record numbers of infections and deaths from the disease, and that it could even become the dominant strain.

However, he maintained that this is probably a slow process. “Vaccines are effective enough against this version of the virus, which is not so different as to drastically change the ability to join the antibodies“he explained.

The AY.4.2 subvariant is also on an upward trajectory in England and had already accounted for about 6% of all sequences generated in the week beginning September 27, according to a report from the UK Health Security Agency Posted Oct 15.

British Health Minister Sajid Javid said on Wednesday there was no reason to believe that the subvariant poses a greater threat than the strain. Delta.

For his part, Russian immunologist Nikolay Kryuchkov said that the Delta strain and its subvariants would remain dominant and could somehow be adapted to vaccines in the future, especially where rates of immunization they are below or just above 50 percent.

“But it seems to me that it is not going to take a great leap, because the coronavirus, like any organism, has an evolutionary limit, and the evolutionary leap has already occurred,” he said.

The Russian health ministry did not immediately comment.

The mayor of Moscow announced the strictest lockdown measures since June 2020 on Thursday.