Covid-19 in Bulgaria: Omicron strain found in all 88 samples – NCIPD
Bulgaria’s National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD) said on October 25 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 88 samples.
NCIPD said that the samples, taken over a period of time ranging from September 24 to October 12 in 14 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, but no longer a dominant one.
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 31 cases or 35.2 per cent of the samples, compared to 40.4 per cent of the samples in the previous batch sequenced by NCIPD, the results of which were announced on October 6.
The remaining samples in the latest dataset were 16 cases of the FY.1.2 subvariant, 11 cases of the EG.x lineage, nine cases of the HF.1 subvariant, nine cases of the FL.x lineage, four cases of the GE.1 subvariant, three cases of the GJ.x lineage, two cases of the HK.3 subvariant and one case apiece of the BA.2.86, GK.1 and HV.1 subvariants.
As of October 17, five patients in the NCIPD sample group had died, 24 were undergoing home treatment and 59 had recovered, NCIPD said.
(Photo: Military Medical Academy)
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