Israel: Israeli health authorities announced the discovery in two patients of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus never before detected in the world, Prensa Latina reports.
This combines the BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants, the director general of the Ministry of Health, Nachman Ash, said in recent statements.
We still don’t know what the significance is, although it is almost certain that both infections took place abroad, the new variant could have formed here, he stressed.
In recent weeks, the infection rate in this Levantine nation dropped significantly after suffering the worst wave since the start of the pandemic, at the beginning of 2020. According to official data, more than 1.2 million people contracted Covid-19 last January, a figure that exceeds the 960,500 recorded in all of 2021.