China sees more Covid cases in three months than entire 2021
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The new wave of Omicron – the BA.2 variant – is becoming dominant in many parts of the world. In the UK, cases are again on the rise. The variant is thought to be up to 60 percent more transmissible than the original Covid strain and 25 percent more contagious than the first Omicron variant. With infection cases rising again, what are the most common symptoms being seen?
The BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron – believed to be as mild but more contagious than the original strain – is now the dominant variant worldwide.
But official data released by authorities in the UK this month showed Omicron had led to only 35 deaths per 100,000 infections, compared to 40 fatalities for the flu.
Data has revealed the five most common symptoms which are all similar to the common cold.
Data self-reported to the UK’s Covid app on Monday found the top five symptoms of the virus which include:
- Runny nose with 80.75 percent prevalence
- Headache 68.6 percent
- Fatigue 68.56 percent
- Sore throat 68.21 percent
- Sneezing 66.94 percent.
Other symptoms which may indicate an infection include:
Persistent cough 51.16 percent
Hoarse voice 45.39 percent
Chills or shivers 35.75 percent
Unusual joint pains 32.26 percent
Fever 31.08 percent
Dizziness 29.24 percent
Brain fog 26.68 percent
Eye soreness 24.43 percent
Altered smell 23.02 percent
Lower back pain 22.58 percent
Unusual muscle pain 22.3 percent
Swollen glands 20. 45 percent.
Researchers have found that both BA.1 and BA.2 variants can infect people who were protected from earlier viral strains by vaccines and/or previous infection because their spike proteins are drastically different to any previous Covid strain.
This means that in terms of protection against infection, even populations with high rates of vaccination or prior infection were essentially encountering it as an almost novel virus.
The second reason behind the explosive growth of Omicron is that its incubation time is much shorter than for any previous Covid lineage. BA.2 has an even shorter incubation time than BA.1.
Shorter incubation can lead to explosive growth in daily case numbers over a short period of time even if each infected person passes on the virus to a similar number of other hosts.
The main Covid strains still designated “variants of concern” are:
- Alpha: Earliest sample documented sample from the UK in September 2020
- Beta: South Africa, May 2020
- Gamma: Brazil, November 2020
- Delta: India, October 2020
- Omicron: Several countries November 2021.
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