MOSCOW, November 1. /TASS/. There is no evidence that the new AY.4.2 coronavirus variant, which is a subtype of the Delta strain, causes a more severe course of the disease or is resistant to antibodies, Director of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing Vasily Akimkin said.
"There is no data yet that the new virus causes a more severe course of the disease, that it is resistant to the action of antibodies," he said on Monday at a scientific and practical congress on the pressing issues of the state sanitary and epidemiological surveillance in Russia’s armed forces.
According to the expert, publications by UK healthcare institutions on the results of an early analysis testify to that. "They do not demonstrate convincing proof of differences in the risks of hospitalization or mortality between the detected new gene variant and the baseline of the Delta gene variant," he noted.
Earlier, Kamil Khafizov, who heads a research group developing new diagnostic methods for human diseases at the Central Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology of the sanitary watchdog reported that scientists uncovered five cases of the new AY.4.2 coronavirus variant, three of them in Moscow and the Moscow Region and two - in Tatarstan.
The AY.4.2 COVID-19 variant was discovered in the UK. According to British scientists, it is one of the 45 subtypes of the Delta strain. Director of the Genetics Institute at University College London Francois Balloux suggested that the new variant could spread 10-15% faster than the previous version of the Delta strain.