Covid-19 in Bulgaria: Omicron strain found in all 94 samples – NCIPD
Bulgaria’s National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD) said on October 6 that it has completed the sequencing of the latest group of samples taken from Covid-19 patients in the country, finding the Omicron coronavirus strain in all 94 samples.
NCIPD said that the samples, taken over a period of time ranging from July 3 to September 27 in six out of Bulgaria’s 28 districts, showed that while the XBB.1.5 lineage and related subvariants, which NCIPD collectively referred to as XBB.x, remained the most frequently-encountered lineage, it was no longer the dominant one in Bulgaria.
XBB.1.5 is a sub-lineage of XBB, which evolved from two earlier lineages of Omicron, with an additional spike change, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
ECDC has currently designated XBB and XBB.1.5-like sublineages as variants of interest and XBB.1.16 as a variant under monitoring.
NCIPD’s latest sequencing dataset showed the XBB.x lineage was present in 38 cases or 40.4 per cent of the samples, compared to 36.1 per cent of the samples in the previous batch sequenced by NCIPD, the results of which were announced on September 18.
The remaining samples in the latest dataset were 28 cases of the EG.x lineage, 13 cases of the FY.1.2 subvariant, six cases of the HF.1 subvariant, five cases of the GE.1 subvariant, two cases of the FL.15 subvariant and one case apiece of the GJ.1.1 and GK.1.1 subvariants.
As of October 3, two patients in the NCIPD sample group had died, 11 were undergoing home treatment, nine were in hospital and 72 had recovered, NCIPD said.
(Photo: Military Medical Academy)
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