Four cases of BA.2 Omicron subvariant found in Manitoba

There have been four cases of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 found in Manitoba.

There have been four cases of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 found in Manitoba.

A provincial spokesperson tells CTV News on Friday the first case was discovered on February 8, and the others were detected this week.

“The province has always had a robust system to detect variants utilizing samples from across the province to ensure that the introduction of a new variant is detected and communicated to public health,” reads the provincial statement.

At Thursday’s health system update, Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba’s Chief Provincial Public Health Officer, said the province had not seen significant levels of transmission at this point of BA.2.

“There’s a suggestion this is more transmissible than the original strain of Omicron, but (we are) not seeing a lot of evidence regarding that it’s more severe,” he said. “So, we’ll continue to follow the numbers, we are still sequencing a significant proportion of our cases. We just haven’t seen a lot of BA.2 at this point.”

The province also told CTV News Friday that Cadham Lab routinely sequences about 10 per cent of all PCR positives from across Manitoba or at the request of public health.

“Introduction or establishment of any new strain would be detected using this sampling method,” the statement went on to say. “To date, Omicron BA.1 is by far the most dominant and established strain, brief introductions of Delta or BA.2 have been noted recently but do not seem to be establishing themselves.”