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The World Health Organization says it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the highly transmissible Omicron strain of the coronavirus to assess whether they are more infectious or dangerous. It has added BA.4 and BA.5, sister variants of the original BA.1 Omicron variant, to its list for monitoring. It is already tracking BA.1 and BA.2 - now globally dominant - as well as BA.1.1 and BA.3. The WHO said on Monday (April 11) it had begun tracking them because of their "additional mutations that need to be further studied to understand their impact on immune escape potential". Viruses mutate all the time but only some mutations affect their ability to spread or evade prior immunity from vaccination or infection, or the severity of disease they cause. For instance, BA.2 now represents nearly 94% of all sequenced cases and is more transmissible than its siblings, but the evidence so far suggests it is no more likely to cause severe disease.

The UK Health Security Agency on Friday said it had designated a sub-lineage of the dominant and highly transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant as a variant under investigation. BA.2, which does not have the specific mutation seen with Omicron that can be used as a proxy to easily distinguish it from Delta, is being investigated but has not been designated a variant of concern. "It is the nature of viruses to evolve and mutate, so it's to be expected that we will continue to see new variants emerge," Dr Meera Chand, incident director at the UKHSA, said. "Our continued genomic surveillance allows us to detect them and assess whether they are significant." Britain had identified 53 sequences of the BA.2 sub-lineage as of January 10, with updated figures due to be published later on Friday.