Since abandoning all COVID safety measures and relying on the government’s “Living with COVID-19” strategy, the United Kingdom has seen a surge in the number of people becoming infected with the virus. Although numbers are coming down now, they remain at relatively high levels.This new wave is thought to be driven by the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron as well as waning protection from vaccines. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the BA.2 sub-variant of the original Omicron variant of coronavirus (now known as BA.1) has specific mutations that give it a growth advantage over BA.1.When we have large volumes of two viruses that are genetically linked circulating in the population, there is a risk of a recombinant virus forming. This is thought to have been the case in the UK with the discovery of Omicron XE; a recombinant virus made up of the BA.1 and BA.2 sub-variants of Omicron.
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